Bea Sarrias

Geometry & Colour : Gio Ponti

10 MARCH > 27 APRIL 2024

Friday 19.04.2024, the gallery will exceptionally open later from 2-6pm

The exhibition focuses on capturing the essence of light, colour, and textures of the materials used by the renowned Milanese architect and designer Gio Ponti (1891-1979), synonymous at the time with the symbol of modernity, using geometry as a compositional tool.

The artist Bea Sarrias takes a creative approach, allowing her paintings to combine with each other, creating new compositions and providing viewers the opportunity to actively participate in the experience.

In the exhibition, most of the dimensions of the paintings are multiples of 3, making them easy to combine. In addition, pentaptych and triptych works are featured, which can function alone or in conjunction with others. This strategy invites viewers to explore and experiment with the arrangement of the works, encouraging them to generate their own visual interpretation.

Gio Ponti, a design humanist and creator of the legendary Domus magazine, confessed, “The most resistant element is not cement, wood, stone, steel, glass. The most resistant element in building is art." With this poetic spirit, he designed what is considered his masterpiece, Villa Planchart (1953-1957), in Caracas (Venezuela), where every detail of the house, furniture, and even the tableware is a clear demonstration of his creative genius.

Sarrias portrays and plays with Villa Planchart, conceptualising it as the embodiment of Ponti's philosophy of dwelling, understood as the synthesis of the arts. Bea Sarrias' inspiration from the architecture and design of this villa is her way of paying tribute to Gio Ponti, capturing the essence and creative vision of the Milanese architect in her own artistic work.

The connection between geometry, colour, and modern architecture becomes a visual dialogue in the exhibition, inviting viewers to explore and appreciate the interconnection between these artistic disciplines. In addition to various-sized and composed canvases, this exhibition includes a screen-shaped painting. The film-maker Morrosko Vila-San-Juan created an audiovisual piece, engaging a dialogue between Bea Sarrias' pictorial work and the forms and colours of Gio Ponti - an abstract and allegorical composition that serves as a window into the sensory and sensory universe of the master of masters.