We live in a reality in which the Rite is reduced to sterile repetitions of gestures, emptied of the symbolic charge that has always been its preserve. Hybridisation, copying and stratification are the means by which Elena Monzo proposes a new look at rituality, attempting to awaken that desire that has been dormant in us for too long: the will to look and believe in what we see.Â
Ritual Denim is Elena Monzo’s first solo exhibition within SAC’s post-industrial space, an exhibition of 30 works, created from 2014 to the present, that transport the viewer in a whirlwind of dialogue with figures halfway between myth and the contemporary, embellished with garments and jewels, evoked by a wide variety of mediums: from Washi paper to copperplate engraving, from ceramics to fabrics including denim, the material with which the artist has created the four original works that constitute one of the exhibition’s fundamental nuclei. The path evolved among the main series developed by the artist over the years in order to propose the widest possible vision of her expressive variety and research.Â
Elena Monzo’s subjects seem to come from another world, floating between reality, imagination and ancient narrative in dances with mannerist and twisted poses that reflect her research in the field of rituality. Through these swirling motions, the figures change, intertwining and hybridising with each other to form new shapes, colours and materials in a fusion that continuously evokes new subjects where others already exist. Not only the aesthetics, but also the substance of these figures is constantly changing: in their figurative dynamism, these archetypal women undergo a metamorphosis, becoming Icons. This is the case of Chloe, a figure inextricably linked to myth, whose garments impose a current energy on the ancient and centauric forms of the creature, eliminating any macabre reference and mutating it into a subject potentially destined for some poster or cover of a fashion magazine: a domesticated Cronenbergian subject. The dialogue between ancient and current is very present in Rugiada, one of the few works created directly on canvas, which depicts a being on his knees from whose back a plant apparatus emerges. His back, covered in eyes, looks nostalgically to the past, to a reality that is invisible to us, but his form goes beyond the human, pushed towards an uncertain future. A contemporary alter-ego of the providential two-faced Janus. Elena adopts a process of lightening the subjects, where the ritual repetition of poses, colours and forms seems to seek to affirm a new collective imagination, a pantheon of creatures charged with a new femininity: new Icons for a present that is devoid of idols.Â
Support, Medium, and Technique are just three of the words that are useful to probe the material complexity of Elena Monzo’s works. For ten years now, the artist has investigated various techniques, from two-dimensional to three-dimensional, without ever settling on one, but rather stratifying and hybridising various processes. Paper is often the star of her creations: many of her variants, of different textures, colours and prints, are layered on her works, dressing the figures represented.
It is a medium that becomes a symbol of that complex lightness that distinguishes her aesthetics. To bear the weight of the collages, the support is often recanvassed or reinforced with rigid materials, including the Forex of the Korova Milk series, always placing the paper in the foreground, to constitute the face of the work. In series productions, such as copperplate engraving and silkscreen prints, the paper opens up an intimate dialogue with the figures that populate it, without limiting itself to the simple iteration of the composition. Again in the prints, the artist reaffirms her desire to make the subjects unique and iconic, putting into play “that unrespected rule of copperplate engraving” for which “the copies I have printed always end up being originals, thanks to post-press interventions such as gold leaf, watercolour or inks“. In the section of the exhibition dedicated to prints, there is Moonzoo, in which a priestess with a wolf’s headdress seems to face the observer, flaunting her uniqueness and opposing chastity, a common copy that becomes an iconic matrix, presenting itself as a bridge between shamanic art and contemporary pop.
Denim is an original material that the artist has adopted in various ways for the creation of her latest works. A fabric created for manual work, it became an element of casual clothing during the twentieth century and is analysed with an almost archaeological method in the works on display, integrating it into the work of art, giving it an additional aesthetic function. In the core of works, Ritual Denim appears, which gives the title to the exhibition, a huge denim canvas filled with Monzo’s characters, created from the collection of garments made with the same laser-engraved works thanks to the collaboration with the Development Centre of Candiani Denim, a leading company in the sector, with whose fabric the same garments as those of the capsule collection for SAC were made. The same fabric was used by the tailor Vasco Inzoli, who created three work garments that were then embellished with Luiss jewels.Â
Among the four original canvases is Coraline Korallion, a work in which the figure, contorted in a ritual, seems to give rise to a coral from her body, a precious element that is painted in this work, and not added to the surface. The denim here constitutes the edge of the canvas, the frame that delimits and encloses the figure in a narrow space that even she seems to suffer.
Not only in graphic and pictorial works, but also in sculptural ones such as ceramics and cushions, Elena Monzo seems to fish from that vertigo effect of which Celant speaks, conceiving her works as complex hybridisations and stratifications between mediums (1).Â
The theme of the Journey is both central and twofold in the artist’s poetics. Her experiences abroad are numerous, especially in artists’ residences that have allowed her to enrich herself, and then import new materials and concepts into her creative practice. During her residence in Shanghai, she discovered Washi paper, which is used for some of her works such as Washi, in which the composition, strikingly vertical, welcomes a dialogue between sign figures and oriental characters, enclosed by an elegant edging. Through the project with The geography of transformation, in collaboration with the Treviso fashion designer Cristina Battistella, the shapes affirmed on Washi paper are projected on quiet and sustainable materials such as silk and tulle in a series of outfits that are exhibited in dialogue with the paper, highlighting the importance of the relationship between art and fashion rooted in the artist’s poetics. In Japan, she learned the mastery of working with materials, reflecting on the dichotomy between art and craftsmanship, a distinction that is typical of Western thought. In Lebanon, she experienced the hybridisation between different cultures firsthand, another element that is often allegorised in her works. Not only as an experience, the Journey is a key theme of the creative and design phases of the artist’s works. In the Rite of Preparation, her figures are born from the research and collection of images, evoked nude on the support, at their earliest stage. The process of metamorphosis through the garment then follows: the artist dresses her figures, embellishes them and gives them an identity through the superposition of precious papers and accessories, letting the original subject breathe and stopping before arriving at the heady threshold of kitsch.
In light of all this, Elena Monzo’s art can certainly not be defined as conceptual. Despite this, she often finds herself reflecting on recurring symbolic elements that emerge from her works in an evident way. In the motif of rituality and transformation, the accessories assembled on the works, conceived by the craftsmanship of Luiss Perlanera, become talismans charged with a magical energy that the priestesses evoked by the artist control. Flowers, stars and precious spiders are Frida‘s talismans, adorning her by bringing her representation out of the work, as bridges between the image and the real. In this way Frida Kahlo, a famous figure in contemporary culture, renews her uniqueness through stratification, becoming a Neo-Icon bearing intimate and strong symbols such as that of motherhood. Another theme that is often investigated by the artist is that of doubling, envisaged as a coherent dialogue between two copies: SintetiK, another one of the original canvases edged in denim, takes back up a subject from the iconography of Die Antwoord, in which the two artists merge into a unique and androgynous being.
The work is in fact configured as a synthesis of the theme of the twin, which was addressed in 2014 with Bo & Bo, which is therefore resolved ten years later: the twins become a single hybrid figure, in form and in sexuality. Elena Monzo proposes an escape from the exasperating decadence that time is landing on, seeking, as Battiato sings, “in the obsessive rhythms, the key to tribal rites“.Â
(1) Celant Germano, Artmix. Flussi tra arte, architettura, cinema, design, moda, musica e televisione, Feltrinelli, 2021.
Critical text by Pietro SalvatoreÂ
BIOGRAPHY
Elena Monzo was born in Orzinuovi (BS) in 1981. After graduating in painting from the Academy of Brera in 2005, she specialised in graphic techniques as a Master Engraver. As early as 2002, she participated in the group exhibition of the Museo della Permanente in Milan: Salon I and then began her career abroad in 2006 with the exhibition Obra Sobre Papel at the Mito Gallery in Barcelona. The following are some of the most important group exhibitions in which she has participated: in Germany in 2008, Junge Italienische Kunst at the Galerie Blinz & Kramer in Cologne, Fall Forward, in Sara Tecchia’s New York studio in 2009 and many others to follow including some Biennials, that of Postumia in 2010 and that of Soncino in 2019, up to the most recent ones such as Super S.H.E by Giovanni Bonelli in Milan in 2028, HUMAN NATURE, at the Galerie Marek Kralewski in Freiburg and the two exhibitions held at the SAC Profili and Venus in Furs in 2023 and 2024. From 2010 to 2024 Elena’s works were exhibited at important fairs such as the Scope in Basel, New York and Miami, Beirut ArtFair, Art Verona and ArteFieraBologna. The artist has been exhibited not only in group exhibitions, but also in solo exhibitions such as Inside, at the Bonelli Contemporary in Los Angeles in 2007, La Dolce Vita and Dark Venice at the TZR Gallery in Dusseldorf in 2010 and 2014, Moon Zoo and Stranger Things at the Gilda Contemporary in Milan in 2017 and 2024 and Silk, La via della Seta at the former Filanda Meroni in Soncino in 2018. Her experiences in artist’s residencies, during which Elena gathered new elements, both conceptual and material, for the creation of her works, are very important: Kurashiki in Japan in 2013, Beirut, Lebanon in 2014 and Shanghai with The Swatch Art Peace Hotel in 2015. Finally, she has won several awards, including the Italian Factory Prize for young Italian painting held at the Superstudio-plus in Milan in 2004, participation in the Cairo Prize in 2010, and more recently the Combat Prize in 2020.Â
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