Margherita Mezzetti

Margherita Mezzetti has a natural inclination towards fairy tale themes and atmospheres, a pictorial instinct that drives her to compose small, abstract tales of initiation. Tempo (Time) is, precisely, the title of the work in competition, which shows us a young woman sunk into an unbreakable sleep, halfway between Sleeping Beauty and Snow White unconscious after biting the apple. It would be impossible to place the protagonist of the painting in a specific era: contemporary details such as tattoos and the serpentine lace of her shoe contrast with the long amber skirt reminiscent of court dress, while the red curtain, barely discernible in the gloom of the background, adds a dreamlike and theatrical nuance. Playing with references is a speciality of Mezzetti, a graduate of the Academy of Venice who now lives in Berlin. In this and other works, she seeks to stage “a personal, slow and meditative dimension”. The sleep depicted is therefore not the result of a fairy-tale spell, but the assertion of a private world, removed from the voracity of everyday life, and the time alluded to in the title cannot be measured or monetised – it is the eternal, imponderable time of artistic creation.

Giulia Oglialoro