Luisa Rabbia "Another Country"

Luisa Rabbia
b. 1970
"Another Country"

Executed in 2016.
signed lower right on the reverse
acrylic, colored pencil, and fingerprints on canvas
84 by 60 in. (213 by 152 cm.)

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Condition Report:
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Catalogue Note:
Luisa Rabbia often covers the surface of her paintings with a countless number of fingerprints to allude both to individuality as to marks left by humanity over the course of time. In “Another Country” a succession of fingerprints on the top of the painting reminds of a long line of migrants. The work's title is taken from the novel by James Baldwin which the artist interpreted as a desire to live in a future place where gender and ethnic differences could be redefined, or perhaps not defined at all.

A site-specific mural 60 ft long with the same title and similarly executed was exhibited in 2017 at Collezione Maramotti in Italy during Luisa Rabbia solo show titled “Love”. The work is now part of the Collezione Maramotti art collection”.

Luisa Rabbia blends the distinctions made between the human and the natural, expressing solidarity with the cosmos through the organic, bodily landscapes of her expansive paintings. The scale of Rabbia’s paintings suits the themes she explores, oftentimes depicting overlapping abstracted figures joining and breaking apart, seemingly overcoming their physicality. She alludes to interconnected natural processes forming a thread between microcosms and macrocosms and interweaving them in a nebulous primordial state. Continually in flux and transforming, her forms created in expressive hues also evoke spiritual transitions. Upon closer viewing and bringing this substantial work to a more intimate level, her physical and intuitive process becomes visible with its rhythmically scraped paint, the stratification of pencil marks, and imprints of fingertips. Rabbia alludes to the minute traces that each person leaves over the course of a lifetime, yet simultaneously asserts an expansive and interconnected vision of a wider universe.

Luisa Rabbia (b. 1970, Turin, Italy) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received her MFA from the Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti in Turin, Italy. Solo museum exhibitions include: Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy; Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA; Fundación PROA, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice, Italy; Fondazione Merz, Turin, Italy. Group exhibitions include: Magazzino Italian Art Foundation, Cold Spring, NY; Manifesta 12, Palazzo Drago, Palermo, Italy; Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, Italy; Biennale del Disegno, Museo della Citta, Rimini, Italy; Lismore Castle, Waterford, Ireland; Shirley Fiterman Art Center, New York, NY; Maison Particulière, Brussels, Belgium; Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Museo del Novecento, Milan, Italy; MAXXI Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI secolo, Rome, Italy; Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China.

Provenance:
Kindly donated by the artist and Peter Blum Gallery, New York