Ophelia (art) - digital painting of a doll by Barbara Agreste

Reviews

Poisoned Ivy

About Barbara Agreste

Poisoned ivy - About Barbara Agreste - Ophelia Blood Lake - A painting from "The Catharsis of Ophelia" series.

Poisoned Ivy

 

Barbara Agreste, post surrealist artist, her artwork takes the viewer into a dreamy world full of tricky tiles, falling flowers, and sharp shards.
She blends poisoned ivy to the image of Ophelia, showcasing a doll as the best example of her strange way of conceiving beauty: never flaunting, discreet and androgynous, part of a concealed world immersed in thriving nature and cold swamps, a fragile universe of subtle ethereal pain and melancholic moods.

Barbara Agreste disseminates fallen petals, disconnected shiny leaves, and fragments of mirror along impervious paths, leading the viewer of her video art, and short films to a journey characterized by the instability of walls and floors, and by the dazing alternating colours of unsteady tiles. There is always danger in these adventures, uncanny places of hidden eyes, or architectures built with the special purpose of causing accidents to the passengers. It is nature the tricky environment, full of leaves and blood, but this natural lanscape is also magnified and remoulded: it is not a totally true vegetation that we see, but rather a genetiacally modified one, a distorted natural proliferation, reminiscent of the cinematic settings, assembled like a labirinth hiding too many things, leading to a previously arranged scene.

Never trust your eyes.

poisoned-ivy

Poisoned Ivy

About Barbara Agreste

Rain Blood

Rain Blood - endless raining from the sky, this film has red tears dropping all over the agonising vegetation.

Rain Blood

This is a film frame from Rain, the short film by Barbara Agreste. This particular frame shows the shot in which some multicolored leaves fall from the sky, and their branches are violently shaken by a mysterious and frenetic wind. This wind seems to be upset, like if it was sent from a angry God wanting to punish humans for having misbehaved, or mistreated the Earth.

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Animation: Reptilica transferred on film

Animation, Reptilica, art film by Barbara Agreste, has been recently transfered on film.

Barbara Agreste’s animation short “Reptilica” has been recently transferred to film.

 Reptilica was made in 2005.


To produce this animation Barbara Agreste rented a digital camera, and built a box about one meter long and eighty centimeters high using wood sticks, plywood sheets, and painting a sheet of paper to make a multifaceted floor. That way Reptilica begun, with “fimo” plastic that was used to sculpt worms, and a lot of dry leaves, flowers, and seeds thrown at the set to decorate a sinister and surreal closed environment.

 

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Sublime dolls and deceit

Sublime Dolls is a review about Barbara Agreste: her video art shows restless figures and the anxiety of...

Sublime Dolls

Barbara Agreste, post-surrealist artist, much appreciated abroad for her VideoArt, is presenting for the exhibition “The sharing of difference” four paintings that dwell on the subtle dreamy line that separates life and death.

Her figures have no peace, and are representative of the uncertainty and anxiety of the contemporary human soul.

 

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Alice’s Inverted Reality

Alice - a trip into a mad inverted reality of mirrors and check points...

Alice’ inverted reality

Barbara Agreste‘s art can be defined as a multifaceted philosopher stone. Her creations are an intense and almost infinite work of layering thin petals and other transparent material one on top of the other, closely looking into reconstructing lost patterns, and existing forms with new colors, as if behind every object an unidentifiable amount blood is about to flow.

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Puzzle art: Walking on tiles

 

Animation with checkered walls in a tunnel, made with computer 3D software. Video art, Film by Barbara Agreste.

 

Recognizing a puzzle.

Mosaics like a puzzle are there because someone needed to reconstruct a complete visible picture with tiny fragments of color found in the soil coming form an ancient world.
Chessboards are like mosaics in Barbara Agreste‘s work: walking into the right tile bends the space of a dream to a safe exit, and stepping into the wrong spot opens the door to a repellent trip, a place infested with insects and worms.

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Abrasive Light

Abrasive Light - random cuts of light reflections and refractions squashed into a jumble of colors

Abrasive Light

Barbara Agreste has been making art since when very young: she used to live with her family in a house up on the hills in an far land surrounded by a forest; her drawings were inspired by fairy tales and by the vegetation and the creatures living in that landscape. When she attended the art college in the closest town, she learned life and architectural drawing techniques, and her work became more structured.

 

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In Reptilica Barbara Agreste’s Symbols

Barbara Agreste's symbols. The doll is also sadly a symbol for a perfect lifeless beauty...

“In Reptilica i simboli
di Barbara Agreste”

Video of the week:
“In Reptilica Barbara Agreste’s symbols”

Review by Claudia Quintieri | 18 June 2012

Barbara Agreste loved art ever since. Her formal training begun at the art College of her town, and after that she lived in Milan for some time attending a Set Design course in Brera Academy.

Video Art, Short Film by Barbara Agreste. Image with a doll on a checkered blue floor watching worms pass by.

(The image above refers to the short animated filmReptilica)

In 1993 she moved to the UK where at first she took contemporary dance classes, and performed in dance companies; but after two years she returned to the visual arts enrolling at the University of Kent.

 

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Jamais Vu

Painting of a Doll from the "Ophelia and Catharsis" series by Barbara Agreste.,

Jamais Vu (never seen)

This evening for the exhibition organized by Agnes Casolani “Jamais Vu”, at the Rose est la vie Rose Garden, in Thaulero 12 Rd, Barbara Agreste will present a selection of her new paintings from her “Spine Flowers” series. The exhibition will be up until the 9th of August.

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Dolls - Ophelia (art, paintings) series by Barbara Agreste