The Dorothy Circus Gallery is ready to celebrate the Roman spring with a two person show of European artists, the Italian Seven Moods and the Swiss Zoe Byland.
Both artists already in the avant-garde of figurative contemporary international scene, appreciated by connoisseurs of the most refined painting techniques, Byland and Seven Moods have recently exhibited their stunning artworks in the group show dedicated to the theme of water "Lacrima Aquarium", held at the Acquario Romano Museum, along with 33 of the most renowned artists from the pop surrealist scene.
This time around as prime protagonists of the Red Hall of the Dorothy Circus, Byland and Seven Moods, with their languages inevitably distant, they find themselves involved in a common Nocturnal theme, that seems to emerge from the photography of the early '900 as well as from the film-noir era, bringing with it the mystery of distant memories, the nostalgia of a vintage aesthetic, and at the same time all the iconography of the pop philosophy of our present, in the synthesized symbolism of tattoo, hi tec imagery of science fiction's code and the overbearing street art language, tying them together in an alchemical mix of codes and numbers belonging to a future yet to be drawn.
With Seven Moods's brand new 8 oil paintings, the grace and the beauty of his metropolitan characters cross with a cynical attitude, the crime fiction like scenery, cutting the darkness with the white lace skirts and starched collars.
Everything happens at night, under a sky lit by microscopic stars and white rain: life, love, death, at the speed by which a scent fades in the wind and with the intensity of a flower that continues to flourish.
Meanwhile a strange day filters through the clouds and stops on the 8 brand new Zoe Byland's canvases, illuminating the pages in black and white of just out of school students' diaries. They are little more than children or much more than little girls, they are aware of the cold embrace of passing time and they know mysterious destinations, they crop papercuts to fly away, they are able to pose at depths of an ocean elegantly furnished, for as long as necessary to subvert our expectations so as to continue playing in the viewer's head, leaving him to fantasize in the throes of a multitude of suggestions.
The surrealism of Byland settles in the era of "good and nice costume", in a re-reading so romantic and nostalgic as lucid and ironic that if with one hand it brings to light all the charm of a vintage fabolous epoch, with the other it let turning off into the darkness everything that hasn't been Fantasy.
Marco Pisanelli, aka Seven Moods, was born in 1977. He graduated from the Art College of Matera and at the age of 18 moved to Rome where he attended the Academy of Fine Arts.
As a child he shows interest in drawing and music, and so begins to split his time between the drawing from real life and the study of drums, two passions that live simultaneously in a parallel continuous research, development and experimentation.
The artist draws inspiration from a dream imaginary world made up of places, smells and colours that live in his soul, stimulated by the changing of seasons, light and all that surrounds him, but in a parallel dimension to reality.
As such, the jellyfish can fly under the sun, on a dry land and all forms of life can live peacefully out of their natural habitat. Seven Moods loves to tell a story to himself and, as a contemporary demiurge, leads his characters to appear in the darkness and slips them on the canvas, making us part of his dreams and his stories.
As a lead artist of the italian New Surreal movement, Seven Moods has first exhibited in 2010 in the Project Space at the Dorothy Circus Gallery during the Nicoletta Ceccoli's Solo Show.
In 2012 he had his first solo show, titled “After the night”, at the Dorothy Circus Gallery. In the same year he was selected for the institutional group show “Pop Surrealism: Stay Foolish” that took place at the prestigious Museum “Casa del Conte Verde” in Rivoli – Torino.
In 2013 he was part of the “Lacrima Aquarium” group show at L'Acquario Romano / La Casa dell'Architettura – Roma. More recently his art has been displayed in th U.S.A. and his works have become part of prestigious Italian and international collections.
Zoè Byland was born in Bern, Switzerland in 1975. She first studied Art and Media Design in Zurich and, in 2002, joined the Muntean/Rosenblum master class for contextual painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. She completed her study in 2008, under Elke Krystufek and Hans Schreil.
Through a dialog concept of historical and contemporary portraits, Byland has, in recent years, developed a type of figurative composition that has attained an impressive position within the Austrian art scene. Vintage photography, grafic novels, noir film , and also comics, street art, and various historical image genres are all elements that form the basis of her paintings.
Zoe Byland exhibited in 2013 with Dorothy Circus Gallery for the group show “Lacrima Aquarium” and in Winter group show, with Ray Cesar and Meryl Donoghue at KochXBos gallery in Amsterdam, in 2012 for Tiny Trifecta at Cotton Candy machine in New York, curated by Tara Mc Pherson, and again in New York with Praxis Art Gallery and Inoperable Gallery.