Elizabeth Dorazio
April 30th – June 11th, 2021
Beauty, beauty, beauty a thousand times inevitably describes the series of works by artist Elizabeth Dorazio, known for plunging into nature through collage. The visions of her work show the artist sheltered by large leaves, huge flowers, gigantic trunks of the plants and nature’s exuberance. The photographic collages stem from her symbolic and intuition of the natural worldview. Landscapes that place humans in the shoes of a stranger observing a vegetal and aqueous world. This conjunction represents a true Garden of Eden in both series I went on a trip, 2020 – 2021, and On Nature, 2019 – 2020.
In the series I went on a trip, collages on paper and digital copy illustrate landscapes that border on phantasmagoria, dream-like images. These are observed by the artist’s figure itself, strategically placed in each photographic collage. Dorado illustrates beautiful visions of the world, a romantic and cosmic sight of forests, woods, rivers, mountains, clouds, sky, light, shadows and fauna. In the scenes she creates, she stands miniature before the grandeur of nature. By placing herself within the invented, transfigured and exaggerated landscape, the carnivorous-looking flowers and menacing plants seem ready to swallow her. The artist stands as a mere observer in awe of the fantastical world of plants.
Humans are nothing more than a cell, an atom, a grain of sand alive in the universe that makes up the Earth. Such romantic thought becomes evident in her landscape collages and in the collage drawings of foliage from the On Nature series. In this exhibition, she is left out of composition, as is said of a photograph or a painting, as an observer. Transparencies are created through the layers upon layers carefully laid on top of each other. This creates pictorial, translucent, silky and warm layers for the eye. Her collages mix idealism with realism and phantasmagoria (the unimaginable, the invention), mingling human and natural spirituality in her work. A sublime conjunction in art.
– Ricardo Resende, Curator Museu Bispo do Rosário Arte Contemporânea