The Grey Hour / Neutral Gray, 2021

Valentina Gelain’s artistic research revolves around emotional-visual analysis, investigating on different levels the psychic motions and their possible representations. Making visible what is not visible, using narratives and contexts full of meaning, studded with symbolism.

A moment of analysis and confrontation, starting from the own mental sphere and following the plots in which it’s common to get lost, to the call of still imperceptible introspective metamorphoses that lead to the catharsis of being. Urging you to expand towards an ever-evolving symbiotic rediscovery and growth.

”The membrane is peeling away.
The reflection drips and everything seems to lose consistency,
mixing in a moment that appears eternal.
Contemplating in a static wandering motion,
I find myself looking at someone who was me,
in a meditative elsewhere, right here:
between fragments of the past, and waves of the present…
… shrouded in grey.”

The art film highlights how we can relate emotionally to the environment to express our inner mental and emotive states.

In this case, starting from a personal experience, it shows a frame of mind connected to apathy, the inability to act, the difficulty of self-relating and, specifically, the dissociative disorders. More generally, to a hard period, which can be linked to depression (or not), to a turbulent emotional state or, in this case, a stuckness moment.
The Grey Hour is an intimate encounter and dialogue with oneself, played with shades of grey and, paradoxically, with beauty and harmony, which want to give space and light to mental issues that are often still victims of taboos in today’s society.

The project is the artist’s most recent multidisciplinary art production and its body of work includes: film (video art), photographs, performance, crafting and poetry.

However, the main part of the production is composed of the art film in question, which was made during the year, among the interiors of Malakta (Malax) and natural landscapes of Ostrobothnia, Finland. The filming session was mainly concentrated in the spring, when the territory offered the shades and colours that Gelain was searching for the work. Tones and instants explicitly ancticipated by the title.

More info about the project: Black Box Genesis – The Grey Hour / Neutral Grey

Panismo Androgino, 2020

A figurative and symbolic tribute, starting from our human existential sphere and our possibilities of awareness, leaning towards a perceptive and revitalising dilation.

A simple line delineates two figures with human features that, with their curved bodies and sylvan arms, tend circularly towards the central fulcrum of the composition; a central point where the two entities converge, or at the same time diverge, merging into one.

The sinuous artwork is outlined in a sign that is never interrupted, thus perpetuating its intrinsic essence. A meaning that becomes extrinsic as it dissolves in the surrounding liquid and in the pregnant plurality of the cosmic reality of which it is part.

A cyclical essence that, starting from us, expands in the ancestral flow of life, of phenomena, of totality. Possibilities of openings from which to flow and extend ourselves, almost to the point of fragmenting the facets of these multiple, ever-growing truths which, in a vital contraction, merge and reunite, tending these connections… now triggered.

The artistic production is divided into three parts: wall installation, sculpture/miniature and video. Both plastic works were created with iron wire, which, shaped and bent, outlines the visual content without ever being interrupted. Thus, it can be said that the artwork consists only and simply of a single line. The prototype of the main piece was created and used in the video, filmed with a GoPro camera.

More info about Valentina Gelain: Black Box Genesis – Valentina Gelain