And What Comes Back

Mitzi Pederson

Unosunove Gallery

November 24, 2010 - January 22, 2011

www.unosunove.com

by Clara Giannini

Mitzi Pederson is an American artist born in 1976 in Stuart, Florida. Now she lives and works in Berlin. She exhibits in may spaces in the USA and in Europe, and her current show in Unosunove Gallery in Rome is her first solo show in Italy.

And What Comes Back is an exhibition that perfectly encloses the artist’s style. As can be seen from it, Pederson is interested in showing the changes that the materials she uses undergo during time. She allows them to take their own form and contribute to the making of the work of art. Her peculiarity is the interaction with the materials: Pederson creates a sort of dialogue to which both parts answer respecting the other and complementing each other. This is a process that needs permission, cooperation and renunciation: the material allows the artist to act, and this leads to a collaboration between the sides and also to an acceptance of not perverting the nature of the elements she is using. Working in this way, she underlines her intention to reduce control on the precision of the placement, and to leave space to the changes that modify the work. Pederson destroys the schemes in which materials have been enclosed, and leaves them free to change and to express their being alive.

For the exhibition in Unosunove Gallery, the artist concentrated her attention on photos. They are pictures of some of her uncompleted creations, manipulated and combined with other materials such as silk, wood and paper. The subject represented is no more recognizable, and the surface of the photos is modified taking advantage of their consistence and of their interaction with external elements. Charcoal, graphite and sand render the surfaces more vital and vibrant, and attract the visitor’s attention.

The two-dimensional state is outstripped thanks to the presence of external materials such as pieces of wood or squares of silk. The photos are reduced in fragments and pasted on a flexible surface leaving them free to assume other shapes, or they are combined together with wood, thread or yarn showing how all these elements can create an entirely new reality.

In the two-room gallery, works that do not include photos are exhibited, too. In order to create them, Pederson used only wood, thread and yarn of different dimensions and shapes. Together, these materials form works of art that embody the artist’s intention. In fact, they are subjected to the action of the surrounding environment, and they assume other conformations different than the original ones, above all wood.

Some of Pederson’s works are mounted in corners of the room. This disposition is really interesting because it seems that these works are part of the surrounding space, but, at the same time, they create space by their own. Several plans and depths state the concreteness of the works and seem to speak out loud their existence and authenticity. In this way, they adhere to the artist’s idea that these objects are alive and part of our reality.

Pederson’s minimalism fills the space of Unosunove Gallery, and the question that arouses has a direct link with her philosophy. In fact, this minimalism can be a direct consequence of her desire to show the essence of the materials to the world, her relation with them and also their ductility. All this is absorbed and, in a certain sense, assimilated by the materials, which, in this way, can demonstrate and confirm their vitality.

In And What Comes Back, materials and works of art coexist and live together with the spaces of the exhibition; here, Pederson plays with forms, tension and movements of the elements creating a game of perception that transmits the dynamism of the objects. Thus, it is not by chance that the artist’s works in this show are all untitled. Pederson does not give to the visitors any hint to interpret what they see, but she offers them the possibility to follow their perceptions and lets them free to choose their own interpretation. As she believes in the freedom of the materials, here she seems to believe in the spectators’ freedom in analyzing and judging her works.