Ima Montoya | Take me to the River
From 07/11/2024 To 07/12/2024
It is a small retrospective of the Basque artist Ima Montoya, Take me to the River, the exhibition in Milan and which opens on November 7th in the space of the Raffaella De Chirico gallery in via Monte di Pietà , 1 A.
The artist has been represented by the De Chirico gallery for the past 6 years and this is Montoya's first personal exhibition in the new Milanese venue. Her reputation is now consolidated and she is quite well known in Italy after two solo shows in Turin (one of which was virtual during the first lockdown in 2020) and several editions of the Verona fairs and the next Arte in Nuvola in Rome.
In 2020 the Nec Metus. Like a Rolling Stone, body of work was exhibited for the first time, in a period of immobility, it embodied the idea of movement and displacement, both physical and metaphorical, as an artistic theme and personal evolution was very impactful (and also consolatory in a very difficult moment). This concept is repeated throughout our journey, a movement guided by our inner strength, which like an engine pushes us from darkness towards light; this very human need to group together, to be together, to advance and to feel that we are not alone and that there is a horizon full of light. From this almost celestial perspective, we realise that each individual forms part of a whole. Our decisions and emotions unite us and form a human tapestry that is woven through lived and dreamed experiences that define us.
The Like a Rolling Stone cycle is accompanied by a selection of works from the Poemas de Agua body of work from a personal exhibition in Tunis (Tunisia) where she explores the medium of water. This has developed further after two intense experiences of Montoya: a residency in Almeria in Spain, with an international collective of artists (recently on display together again in Texas, USA, with the exhibition Crossing Water). She has continued to investigate water in her work and not strictly speaking to the ecological aspect. It is certainly a work of and about balance, of the Earth and personal and of the inevitable interaction.
The very recent pictorial passage on the theme of water has certainly become more radical: in Montoya's latest works the figuration has disappeared, leaving room for the origin. Intense blues in which microorganisms seem to live and which are our genesis from which perhaps we would like to start again: Take me to the river, drop me in the water, Take me to the river, dip me in the water (Talking Heads)