ESSO Gallery is pleased to open the 1998-1999 season with an exhibition of works by the Italian artist KETTY LA ROCCA (b.1938 � d.1976), and additionally to introduce the American artist HOLLI SCHORNO for her first solo exhibition.

KETTY LA ROCCA: Works on Paper 1965 � 1974

Exhibition Dates: September 11 - December 19, 1998. Opening Reception: Friday, September 11, 5-8 p.m.

KETTY LA ROCCA, who died prematurely in 1976, was one of the most distinctive Italian artists of the '70s. The interdisciplinary nature of her work places her amid events, typical of the decade, that oscillated between visual poetry, installation, video and performance. La Rocca first appeared on the art scene in the mid '60s with collages made from newspaper images and words. Freely put together, the combinations resulted in fresh viewpoints that work ironically to undermine the tranquilizing messages of advertising. Here socio-political reality (for example, the exploitation of the woman�s body, the threat of war, and the political and ecclesiastical manipulation of consciences) emerges as the hidden, repressed part of mass-media discourse. The pieces executed during the second half of the '70s deal with the derealization of preexisting images. Using photography, books, video and performance, she explored this territory touching up anthropological values. She used X-ray of her own skull as an icon upon which she traced invocations; she turned writing, action and image into the vehicle for a sentimental journey that announces at its point of departure, the forbidden means to be taken. There are reproductions of works of art, film posters, early-20th-century photographs, or autobiographical sites, where the artist traces the outlines of her journey, until the lines and the arbitrarily distributed stains make the initial image illegible (as in "Margherita Gauthier", 1974, where the image is the playbill for a Greta Garbo film). The signs eclipses the very memory of the icon, the writing is lost in the pure graphical gesture, the gestural quality is diminished in the weak agitation of the tracing. Language is made autonomous from its relationship of reciprocal dependency on the image, and it is shorn of its semantic value to the point where it, too, can be dealt with as an image. The pieces selected for this exhibition show the broad scope of her work.

Solo exhibitions include the Venice Biennale (1978), the Centre d�Art Contemporain in Geneva (1992), Kunstlerhaus in Stuttgart (1995). Her work has been exhibited at the Museo d�Arte Moderna, Turin; at Leverkusen Museum, Cologne; The Philadelphia Art Museum, Philadelphia (1973), Museum am Ostwall in Dortmund (1974), Columbia University, New York (1979), Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (1995). Recently published are both a monograph and CD devoted to her work by the Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund and Gallery Emi Fontana, Milan.

Project Room: HOLLI SCHORNO Opening Reception: Friday, September 11, 5-8 p.m. For her first solo exhibition, Holli Schorno will present a series of works on paper made from collaged book cuttings. Obsessively cut and meticulously glued, these works explore a way of composing images through their deconstruction and reconstruction. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at John Weber Gallery and at DFN Gallery, NY 1998.

ESSO Gallery upcoming exhibitions will include among others JEANETTE LOUIE with photographic sculptural works in her first New York solo exhibition and CAROL RAMA whose travelling retrospective will be on view at the ICA, Boston from October to January.

ESSO Gallery is under the administrative and curatorial direction of Jennifer Bacon and Filippo Fossati
Hours: Wednesday through Saturday from 1 to 7 pm (or by appointment).
For further information and visuals please contact (212) 714.8192

ESSO Gallery - 191 Chrystie Street - New York NY 1002 tel. (212) 714.8192 - fax (212) 505.5805 - e-mail: esso@spacelab.net

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