‘Cosmic Horizons’, a solo exhibition by Letizia de Maigret.
Join us from the 15th of April – 16th of May 2022 to discover the latest collection of Letizia de Maigret exhibiting at XVA Gallery.
Letizia de Maigret directs her artistic research towards an ontological quest to reconnect with the great questions which inhabit humanity: a quest for meaning, origins, permanence and change. It is also a quest for joy, the universal mystery not being devoid, for her, of a festive dimension. She inscribes her artistic approach in the resurgence of a Golden Age, sought after and claimed not as a nostalgic principle, but as vision and a glance towards the future.
Letizia de Maigret proposes a philosophical journey, of overcoming opposites, refuting, in the artistic object, the initial dichotomy of the Apollonian and Dionysian principles evoked by Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy. The former represents measure and restraint (a balance), the latter an all-consuming passion. Together weaving a tale leading to the death of Greek tragedy.
Recently, it is within the scientific approach around the discovery, made in 2015, of gravitational waves (which allow for black holes to exist) that she finds material for new inspiration. The COSMIC HORIZON, allows her to affirm her belief in Parnassus, that would reconcile the search for knowledge and the admiration for mystery.
Letizia explores black holes and their horizons, in their geometric, metaphysical, and psychological dimensions. Thus “recreating” them by a cascade of fluid pigments on rotating canvases. COSMIC HORIZONS are the outcome of kinetic phenomena based on Coriolis’ centrifugal force.
The resulting visual metaphor invites an optimistic vision towards the (unknown) nature of the singularity sheltered by the black hole. COSMIC HORIZONS become the ultimate tribute to Parnassus and the Sublime. Depicting the eyes of the soul of the poets buried in the mists of time.
“A strange rainbow surrounds this dark well, Threshold of the old chaos whose nothingness is the shadow, Spiral engulfing the Worlds and the Days!”, Gérard de Nerval, Christ with Olive Trees.
About the Artist
Letizia de Maigret, born August 31st, 1969, in Geneva, Switzerland, is an Italian-Swiss artist based in Dubai. She holds a BA in Industrial Design from Parsons School of Design in New York, and later acquired her master’s degree in Applied Imagination from Central Saint Martins, in London. She worked as a senior assistant for Karim Rashid in New York and as a junior designer for Ross Lovegrove, exhibiting also at the Gramercy Park International Art Fair, New York. In 2002, she founded 17+1 in Vienna, a company that manufactures cufflinks in China. From 2010 to 2011 she designed “Poupée X,y,z…” & “Massimo” Matryochka dolls, which were produced and distributed by Pylones. More than 20.000 units were sold and they are currently in the permanent collection of the Sergiev Posad museum of history and art in Russia. From 2013 to 2016 Letizia gave speeches in Istanbul and Baku on Art & Gender equality and multiculturalism. Between 2015 to 2020 she was a board member and president of the Ambassadors Circle of the Endowment Fund “Physics of the Universe”, created by Pr. George Smoots, Nobel Laureate 2004 in Physics within Université Paris Diderot. Letizia alongside the artists Tomas Saraceno, Atilla Csorgo, Raphael Dellaporta, Bertrand Lamarche, Gorka Alda, Aitor Ortiz and Liliane Ljin, was the winner of the Fondation Carraso Art citoyen price for the project “Univers 2.0”. It culminated with the exhibition “The Rhythm of Space” in fall 2019 at the Museo della Grafica. Furthermore, Letizia de Maigret has participated throughout the years in numerous art exhibitions in London, Vienna, Geneva, Pisa, and New York, among others.
