UNIVERSO DENTRO
curated by Carine Fol
in collaboration with CENTRALE for contemporary art, Bruxelles
with the support of Wallonie-Bruxelles International
Sophie Whettnall is a visual artist, invited at this XVI edition of festival for the formal and conceptual importance of the photographic image in her creative process. In fact, she frantically collects images of landscapes, which constitute a database that feeds her iconographic vocabulary, visual sources that, depending on her inspiration, become mental landscapes.
The Universo Dentro exhibition was conceived as a journey capable of immersing visitors in different times: the historical time of the place, the time of the work and the time of its contemplation.
Through the lens of her camera or her I-phone, the artist captures light and its traces, freezes the incessant movement of nature, which is either visible or invisible to the naked eye. For more than twenty years, Sophie Whettnall has been deeply experimenting with the landscape: she observes it, scrutinizes it, studies it, feels it and interprets it to offer it to our eyes in all its brilliance and power. Observation, the origin of her drawings, photos and videos, is not static, but dynamic and multiple. The landscape is her refuge: it allows her both to protect herself, isolating herself in solitary contemplation, and to mentally project herself into its immensity.
The title Universo Dentro alludes precisely to this imaginative process by the artist, who, by appropriating the photographed reality, makes the visible reveal both the perceptible and the imperceptible, both the artist and the viewer.
