The Intricacies of Collage From Skin to New Image
Initiated and organized by The Bridge Arts Foundation, the 'SOLILOQUY' Open Call Exhibition is currently being held at The Scholart Selection Gallery in San Gabriel, California, and will run until August 17th, 2024.
Bridge Arts Foundation's Art Director, Tia Xu, engaged in a conversation about the exhibition and art with several artists participating in this exhibition. In this interview, we have the pleasure of speaking with artist Isabella Ronchetti.
—— Q&A ——
Photo courtesy of artist.
Tia Xu: Could you please share your background and what inspired you to pursue a career in art?
Isabella Ronchetti: I’ve always led with the sense of touch. When I look back at early memories, I invariably recall the tactile first, the visual second. I remember my eight-year-old hand pressed against the cold glass windows of my San Francisco bedroom or the delicate sharpness of the olive leaves against my bare arms as I’d walk to elementary school through the hills above Florence. I now recognize that this curiosity is what led me to start drawing.
Central to my work is a tactile quality, a tactility that is sometimes viscerally familiar and at other times it’s as if I am seeking an aspect of it that I do not know. Through a consideration of this “tactile embodiment,” my current work explores the human figure, often fragmented (collaged) or distorted (floating, headless), to address the tension between the mind-body division so prevalent in Western culture and the universal experience of embodiment. Despite the virtual world of information surrounding us, we will always be bound to our physicality, to the medium, to the body.
Tia Xu: What does "SOLILOQUY" mean to you, and how does your artwork explore this theme? Can you tell us the story behind your artwork from the exhibition?
Isabella Ronchetti, Hand III, 2023, Collage (from magazine cut-outs), 12 x 6.50 in (30.48 x 16.51 cm). Photo courtesy of artist.
Isabella Ronchetti: I began to draw as a child when, during extended periods of solitude, I would sometimes begin to doubt I was even real. It’s as though my exchange with the pencil and paper solidified my very existence. “Hand III” takes on a double meaning as it is a product of this soliloquy and a representation of its maker (my right hand).
My creative process is about surrendering to my medium and allowing it to speak through me. The physicality of the process of cutting and pasting allows for an intimate relationship with this ephemera: a detailed, tactile process of thoughtful deliberation and subtle understanding. The analog nature of this undertaking limits me to the possibilities intrinsic to the images I find, placing me in anticipatory dialogue with the paper fragments before me. Presence in this soliloquy is a dance between non-being and materialization.
Tia Xu: What materials and techniques do you prefer to use in your art, and could you explain your choices?
Isabella Ronchetti: I struggle to settle on a favorite medium or technique; the best I can do is explain why I feel each medium is suited to its form, and hopefully convey a thread that connects them all.
Lunatica, Oil on canvas, 12 x 12 in (Left); Eye III, Collage (from magazine cut-outs), 12 x 12 in (Right). Photos courtesy of artist.
My collages are created exclusively using cut-outs of images of skin found in print magazines (primarily from makeup and jewelry ads). Repurposing these photographs requires me to recontextualize the shapes of the body: a cheekbone might become the highlight on a thigh, for example. No longer bound to the photograph, the paper fragments become the medium—shadow and highlight, form and contour—with which to generate a completely new image.
Photo courtesy of artist.
In my more representational work, by contrast, I find myself drawn to colored pencils and acrylic or oil paint to explore surreal expressions of the human figure. These media lend themselves to a much greater degree of accuracy than collage permits, allowing my primary focus to be on the content of the artwork instead of its form.
If I am dividing techniques categorically, I should lastly mention graphic design. While my studies were in branding and editorial design, I especially enjoy graphic projects that depart from the two dimensions and interact with our physical environment. Indoor murals and textile design, for example, are ways in which I combine digital and analog media to experiment with pattern and scale in interior spaces.
Although the media I have listed may seem very different from one another, I find myself seeking a similar sinuosity of outline and smoothness of gradient in each of them. Whether in pencil, collage, oil paint, or Indesign, I communicate in a common language of graphic contour and dream-like synthesis, of both sharp contrast and delicate intricacy.
Tia Xu: Are there any artists or art movements that have had a significant influence on your work? If so, why?
Isabella Ronchetti: In experiencing artwork, I have always been drawn to what I find aesthetically appealing — this could be a wrinkle in one of Degas’ dresses, the jarring typography of a Futurist poster, Dürer’s delicately crosshatched hand, or a graffiti tag’s bizarre color choices. I often sketch these details when I encounter them, creating a fragment collection of sorts. The same is true for concepts from books or conversations that inspire some degree of wonder in me: Zen Buddhism and quantum nonlocality, for example, become mind maps littered with arrows pointing to questions and potential applications.
Too often, I trick myself into believing that my work is entirely the product of my own intellect and experience. But the truth is that I am constantly, if sometimes unconsciously, drawing from the knowledge and imagery of my cultural heritage. I take from Giotto’s compositions and Brunelleschi’s perspective, from Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man and Manet‘s Olympia. I unintentionally fragment my collage subjects the way the Cubists did; I instinctively adopt the Surrealists’ technique of psychic automatism to generate ideas for my paintings. So when I am struck by “inspiration” or it feels like I have made a discovery, I must remember that I have simply dipped into the wealth of the collective psyche.
Photo courtesy of artist.
Tia Xu: What emotions or ideas do you hope viewers will take away from experiencing your artwork?
Isabella Ronchetti: I intend for my work to be appreciated aesthetically, first and foremost. I do not mean this in a trivial or materialistic sense— sight is inevitably our initial and most immediate modality of interface with image. For myself, I seek a palpable, delineated quality of almost visceral satisfaction in my work. I aim to create a harmony of visual experience through which to open a dialogue with other sensory impressions.
When I draw or compose a collage, it’s as though the image is buried in the page waiting for me, and my hand is merely leading me to uncover what is already there. The clearer my mind and the more present I am in this process, the more space there is for content to reveal itself. The emerging figures become a means to intimately investigate the inner workings of my psyche, which in turn find me brushing up against the elusive expanses of the collective unconscious. I strive to capture the miraculous experience of embodiment and, in a metaphysical sense, I seek to convey the quiet intimacy of the creative act itself.
The Bridge Arts Foundation's "SOLILOQUY" Open Call Exhibition Installation View, Photo: ©The Bridge Arts Foundation / Luna Hao
ABOUT OPEN CALL EXHIBITION PROGRAM
The Bridge Arts Foundation's "SOLILOQUY" Open Call Exhibition Installation View, Photo: ©The Bridge Arts Foundation / Luna Hao
Bridge Arts Foundation's Open Call Exhibition Program is designed to provide support for early-career artists. The "SOLILOQUY" Open Call Exhibition has thoughtfully selected 18 talented artists from over 500 submissions, employing a selection process that involves art professionals. "SOLILOQUY" opens from July 13th to August 17th, 2024.
ABOUT ARTIST
Isabella Ronchetti
Lives and Works in New York
Isabella Ronchetti is an Italian-American visual artist, graphic designer and mountaineer. She holds a BA in graphic design from NABA (Milan, Italy) and is currently an MFA candidate in painting at New York Academy of Art. Her work explores the human figure through a surrealist lens, drawing from dreams, mythology, philosophical texts, and an intimate investigation into the inner workings of the psyche. Whether in pencil, collage, oil paint, or InDesign, Isabella’s practice is united by a distinctly delineated visual language that evokes a quasi visceral tactility. Her work can be found in galleries, literary magazines, and on billboards across Europe and the US.