Amy Bessone

Our Secret Garden

April 1th –
May 13th, 2023
Venezia
  • Amy Bessone
    Our Lady of the Rocks (Pink Blush),2020, 2022-2023, cast 2023
    Oil on bronze
    29 x 20 x 5 cm
  • Amy Bessone
    Roll in the Grass,2022-2023
    Oil and oil bar on canvas
    122 x 91 cm
  • Amy Bessone
    Soft Bronze,2023
    Oil on canvas
    183 x 152 cm
  • Amy Bessone
    Untitled (Greco-Roman Silver Rock Grotto),2022
    Oil on canvas and mixed media, artist frame
    44 x 34 cm
  • Amy Bessone
    White Wall,2023
    Oil on canvas
    183 x 152 x 4 cm
  • Amy Bessone
    Light Fortress (Dusk),2023
    Oil and oil bar on canvas
    61 x 46 x 3 cm
  • Amy Bessone
    Marco Polo (gold palace),2022-2023
    Oil on canvas and mixed media, artist frame
    64 x 48 x 4 cm
  • Amy Bessone
    mo mo décor,2023
    Oil and oil bar on canvas
    30 x 41 cm
  • Amy Bessone
    Mon amour!,2023
    Oil on canvas
    183 x 152 cm
  • Amy Bessone
    Ophelia Chong’s Tiny Grapefruit,2023
    Oil, Oil Bar and Alkyd on Canvas
    30 x 41 x 3 cm
  • Amy Bessone
    After the Age of Bronze no. 1,2022
    Oil and oil bar on canvas
    76 x 64 x 3 cm
  • Amy Bessone
    Beyond a Shadow of a Tree,2023
    Oil on canvas
    183 x 152 cm
  • Amy Bessone
    Cartouches no. 1,2022
    Oil, alkyd and oil bar on canvas
    122 x 97 cm
  • Amy Bessone
    Double Fantasy (Copper Bolt),
    Oil and oil bar on canvas
    122 x 97 x 4 cm
  • Amy Bessone
    Everything Is Prototype, Garden 1,2019-2023
    Wood, ceramic, paint, bronze, stone, cardboard, colored pencil, air hardening, modeling clay
    157 x 97 x 46 cm

Patricia Low Contemporary is delighted to announce a solo show by LA-based artist Amy Bessone to launch Patricia Low Venezia, a brand new gallery located on the Grand Canal in the heart of Venice’s museum district, Dorsoduro. Titled Our Secret Garden, the exhibition comprises an array of paintings and a sculptural work that picture archetypal figures, either alone or in groups, in obscure environments pulsating with colour. Echoes of painted figures by Ingres, Picabia, Munch and De Chirico, among others, merge with suggestions of classical and neo-classical architecture, cartouches, and desert oases. Referencing multiple art-historical and architectural sources, yet reconfigured into ambiguous, dream-like settings, and executed in an intense, almost digital palette, the paintings combine a sense of the ethereal with the hyperreal.

In one painting, a reclining nude is seen in a midnight garden along a path leading to a small arched structure; in another, a figure stands in contrapposto pose beside a head on a plinth. Elsewhere, a bronze mask on a pedestal stares hollow-eyed at the viewer, while in another painting, a collection of figures and masks seems to be emerging from a haze of pinks and blues. Motifs including trees, arched recesses and an island fortress recur throughout, alongside the various figures in their particular poses – which also appear in miniature three-dimensional form as part of a diorama, where they are reminiscent of chess pieces. In doing so, Bessone returns these figures, which she paints from sculptures found on auction websites and sundry other sources, to sculptural form. The vignettes in which they appear make up an immersive, if also indeterminate, narrative – a charged, female-centric world of lush foliage, alcoves and abundant bodies, and a site of reclamation and reactivation for objectified forms.

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Amy Bessone was born in New York in 1970 and lives and works in Los Angeles. Educated in the US and Europe — at Barnard College, the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Parsons Paris School of Design, and De Ateliers, Amsterdam — her multidisciplinary practice combines paintings, ceramics, bronze and prints. She has exhibited her work in numerous solo and group shows internationally, notably with Salon 94 and David Kordansky Gallery, as well as The Pit, Los Angeles; Kunsthall Stavanger, Norway; the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Rubell Family Collection, Miami. Her work is held in the collections of the latter as well as MOCA, LA, and those of Frac Bretagne in France, the Saatchi Collection, London, and the Rennie Collection, Vancouver.

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