Beatrice Caracciolo: ‘Studio’ at Frieze Masters 2024
The Italian artist describes her compulsive response to a work by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and how she seeks the ‘inevitable mark’
The Italian artist describes her compulsive response to a work by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and how she seeks the ‘inevitable mark’
Everyone will fall, even if we don’t see it happening. But I also see an energy in this movement: blindness as a force to move forward, to proceed with eyes closed... – Beatrice Caracciolo1
Exploring the creative possibilities of vision and expressive movement, Beatrice Caracciolo distils pre-existing imagery to the brink of abstraction, teasing out pictorial elements or architectural components from landscapes and allegories from the rococo, baroque or renaissance periods to render a sensuous minimalism.
Caracciolo uses a limited range of colours to add tonal value or volume to the vigorous black lines that dominate her canvases, generating the signature vibrancy and dynamism of her practice. Initially made on paper, the paintings are sometimes rubbed, scratched and submerged in water to achieve a rich surface texture before being mounted on canvas. Sculptures of weathered zinc plates and found wood pieces are similarly allusive and tactile.
Drawing on a scope of influences, Caracciolo’s work has affinities with arte povera and the material activism of Joseph Beuys, as well as Chinese landscape painting. Most recently, specific oil paintings by Pieter Breughel the Elder, Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo and Francesco Trevisani have been the point of departure for whole series of works. Caracciolo’s processing of familiar compositions and characters connects their allegories of ignorance, massacre of innocent children and metaphorical blindness to contemporary political reality.
Beatrice Caracciolo is showing with Paula Cooper Gallery at Frieze Masters 2024.
About Studio at Frieze Masters 2024
Following its debut in 2023, Studio, curated by Sheena Wagstaff, highlights Frieze Masters’ commitment to living practice in dialogue with historical art. By focusing on artists’ place of making, it reflects the idea of the past informing the present moment of creation in an object for the future.
Studio features ten solo presentations by Beatrice Caracciolo (Paula Cooper Gallery), Isabella Ducrot (Sadie Coles HQ, Galerie Gisela Capitain and Standard (Oslo)), Nathalie Du Pasquier (Pace Gallery), Shirazeh Houshiary (Lisson Gallery), Kim Yun Shin (Lehmann Maupin), Mernet Larsen (James Cohan), Thaddeus Mosley (Karma), Doris Salcedo (White Cube), Nilima Sheikh (Chemould Prescott Road) and Adriana Varejão(Victoria Miro).
Further Information
Frieze London and Frieze Masters, 9 – 13 October 2024, The Regent’s Park.
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1 Quotation from Sara Pierdonà, ‘A Spiritual Exercise: In the Studio with Beatrice Caracciolo’, Cabana Magazine, 2 March 2024.
