Virginie Louvet Gallery is pleased to present Transfert, Margherita Chiara’s first solo show in France, a proposition of Carlotta Loverini.

The exhibition consists of a composition of pictures and some unique photographs. There are 16 photographic works displayed: Polaroid photographs taken in full light, re-mastered, stripped, transferred on gauze and paper then worked over with inks and tempera to then reborn into a completely new shape. A composition on the back wall of the gallery made of 16 single pictures completes the exhibition.

A delicate yet powerful series of works where the artist transfers her stream of consciousness to the body: the soft feminine curves and the cult shape of the Polaroid both of which playing the role of supports of quasi-abstract images. Metaphors for daydreams: the ability, according to Freud, to express our imagination as adults, having abandoned children’s games.

“What matters is neither reality, nor its representation, but the manipulation of reality in the artist’s mind. “ Margherita Chiarva

To produce these suggestions, Margherita Chiarva did not rely on traditional photographic techniques, but on shadows, manipulation and a chemical treatment of the surface of the paper, in order to “etch” the images on the Polaroid.

A Transfert of her artistic sentiment to the skin of the human body, and the chemical epidermis of the Polaroid film, mediums of manipulations, classic references of the history of art and a fil rouge of the exhibition nested in the intimate space of Virginie Louvet Gallery.

This process makes each work unique and original, as the artist could never replicate, because no negatives of the photographs exist. The classic white frame that protects the image, like the dress enveloping the body, is removed to not distract the attention of the viewer from the cult object, the Polaroid still, to its content, the image. All the attention is focused on the unconscious message conveyed by the image itself. The stripped Polaroid is then mounted on gauze and cotton paper. Adding layers of ink and tempera process the work in this form.

This procedure is an endless repetition, so that with every layer the artist can overcome the passing of time. The process stops only when the artist places the original plastic surface of the Polaroid, once removed, as the final layer. The last act of the process, which interrupts the manipulation of the images and encloses the work of art in an eternal moment, places the object in a physical reality, which has place in time and space.

“Printing and re-mastering gives to the image a tactile beauty and a sense of permanence. The photograph is an image, becoming in these works a tangible object” Margherita Chiarva

Acts of artistic re-elaboration that remind one of an entire generation of photographers devoted to artistic intervention on the image, even using means that often conceal the “artist’s hand”. This way of working produces several levels of meaning which, enclosed in the work, create a sense of empathic, intuitive and unconscious connection between the artist and the viewer. The images are felt more than observed.