Project Description
Collaboration with Grieder Contemporary
Melli Ink draws her inspiration from art history, literature, film and music. Popular culture is as important to her as
high culture, questioning its history and relevance and translating it into our time. Melli Ink works with glassblowers
and other artisans representing dying professions to produce her work. It is one of the reasons she has collaborated
with VOLITIV candles. She likes to incorporate traditional techniques and reuse them for contemporary art.
For this collaboration, Melli Ink has chosen her series of drawings “Faces”. In this series Ink has been inspired by the
line drawings of filmmaker and artist Jean Cocteau, as well as the images of Picasso and Matise.
Grieder Contemporary
Saarbrücken, Germany
2023
Faces is a solo show and intervention at Palazzetto Pisani in Venice that Melli Ink conceived in a very short period of time. Once the location was agreed upon, Ink started her extensive research and series of drawings on paper, a preliminary stage of finding a motive and concept for the site-specific exhibition at Palazzetto Pisani. Originally conceived as a one-week show, the project developed into a collaboration with manager Nicolò Bortolato, who agreed to have the Palazzetto transformed into an “exhibition space” during the period of two months.
Melli Ink was very inspired by the characteristics of Palazzetto Pisani, as it is like entering someone’s “stately home” and not so much a public space. The large fireplaces are decorated with valuable china, porcelain and glass works; we might see a family portrait or plates with family emblems, neatly arranged on the walls. It is that very character of a place that Ink takes as a starting point for her interventions. The exhibition becomes like a treasure hunt, where the viewer has to find out for himself what is part of the project and what has always been there. If you look closely, family portraits have started a dialogue with the works installed by the artist. Within three weeks, ninety pieces conclude the installation Faces of hand painted ceramic, mouthblown glass, drawings and the video piece “I wish I knew what you are looking for”.
Ink has drawn inspiration from the linear drawings of filmmaker and artist Jean Cocteau, as well as imagery from Picasso and Matisse. The self-taught Cocteau would regularly draw his friends and acquaintances in a distinctive, fluid style informed by his interests in cubism, psychoanalysis, and Catholicism. “Poets don’t draw,” he once quipped about his artworks. “They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.”
Having studied theatre design and worked in theatre and film, the work of Jean Cocteau appeals to Melli Ink in particular, since he was not only a filmmaker, but also a poet and visual artist.
mise en scene
In the exhibition at Palazzetto Pisani it becomes apparent, that in her practice she very much creates her own “mise en scene”, that draws in the spectator, and becomes the image himself: “You are the spectator and the image”.
Inspired by …
The common motive of her visual research is the face, sometimes only eyes looking at the viewer. With this project and in her work in general, Ink has no fear of reinterpreting big Masters of Art History, in this case the dominant male artist figures of the 20th century: Picasso, Matisse and Cocteau.
Even if the references are very specific, Ink always embarks on a journey of her own, when interpreting these very well-known motives and adapts them into her own visual language, this way familiarizing them for herself and the viewer. In this manner, faces appeared on plates, vases and drawings leaving it up to the viewer to complete the image. On some images you see the third eye, representing the soul or the inner eye, reminding us not to forget to look inside ourselves.
“Artists are like filters, we take on a vast amount of visual information and references, only to create something of our own”.
The exhibition can be visited daily at Palazzetto Pisani, S. Marco, 2814, 30124 Venice, Italy from 12:00 – 18:00 and by appointment. For further information and images please contact us at info@grieder-contemporary.com or Tel. +41 43-818-56-07.
