Lara Favaretto

The source of Lara Favaretto’s artistic investigations is the festival in its various incarnations, and she draws on popular forms and associations, such as the carnival, the circus, and carousels. Each of the artist’s works stems from a desire to “give a day,” in which she offers a suspended time, separated from the predictability of everyday life and enlivened by the possibility of the marvelous. By shifting that approach into reality, each work thus becomes a gift through which the intoxication of an upside-down world is made tangible.
Not tied to any one technique, the artist produces videos, sculptures, photographs, and drawings, and often creates installations or performances. In this way Favaretto celebrates the joyousness of the art process, transforming it into an epiphany that occurs with the help of the active involvement of viewers. At the same time, the sense of melancholy that follows a festival and the emptiness that is an intrinsic part of the ephemeral are often part of her investigation.
Confetti, sometimes used by the artist for her performances or installations, becomes an original sculptural material in Solo se sei mago (Only if You Are a Magician), 2006. Originally installed in the form of a perfect cube, a direct reference to the precise geometry of Minimalism, the work, however, is subject to continuous deformations and possible disintegration. The thousands of pieces of white confetti that make up the work remain arranged in the form suggested by the artist for a variable period of time, but they tend to be subjected to the laws of entropy. Whether an invitation or a challenge, the work’s title is intentionally directed toward each individual viewer. The sculpture thus becomes the subject of an artist-initiated dialogue with the viewer who seeks to analyze the magic governing the behavior of the flying bits of paper, and the significance of an artistic gesture that accepts being compromised by a simple breath of air.

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