Mariella Simoni

The distinctive artistic practice of Mariella Simoni explores the relationship between conceptual art and abstraction, and between poetry and materiality. Her early works, dating from the mid-1970s, already reveal an interest in organic processes and the movement of living forms, often through precariously balanced objects and plants extending into exhibition spaces.

In 1982, Simoni turned to painting, bringing these concerns into the pictorial space. Her works retain a strong sense of materiality: traces of gesture and successive layers of paint reveal the processes and duration involved in their making.

Simoni’s practice has continued to evolve through her time in different cities, including Athens, Paris, Ghent and New York. Alongside painting, she has occasionally worked in sculpture and installation. Changes in scale, support, colour and contrast continually reshape her approach, while her recent works show a greater economy of material and a renewed engagement with relief and surface.

This exhibition brings together works recently acquired from the artist and Peter Pakesch, offering an insight into the continuing development of Simoni’s practice and her sustained exploration of matter, space and gesture.