Giogia Volpes expressionistic Sponges produce a multitude of organic contortions in the space. Flat in appearance to begin with, these ordinary pieces of synthetic foam undergo the artists' handling and are transformed into multiple volumes. These sequential variations take on different shapes where the matter and its folds directly refer to certain parts of the human body. A hemmed ear, tangled up phalanxes, an introverted navel, a nipple, vagina or an anus, sit enthroned on the completely naked surface of the white paper while also one might say winking references to our small clusters of flesh. These "portraits" which embody our extremities, passages of the interior towards the exterior, from the outside towards the inside, full and then empty give this vulgar industrial object a carnal dimension. Drawing boards of anatomy, half animal, half organic, these staged images are scaled-up and re-worked and suspended between reality and the imaginary in a computerized vacuum.

Alongside, a video records the artists' repetitive and aggressive gestures towards the flat foam, impregnating our memory with this act with the material, like a skin which undergoes tensions and wrinkles with time.

In her approach, Giorgia Volpe explores the relationship of the body and its environment by placing in the space the forms in which she freezes her gestures and movements. The sensorial envelope that is the skin, the passage between the interior and the exterior are recurring themes in her work. Belonging to this movement of artists who work with basic cheap materials with which they divert the meaning and poetize, Giorgia Volpe reaches, in a radical and minimalist manner, the border between the intimate and the public.

Of Brazilian origin, Giorgia Volpe lives and works in Quebec since 1998. A multidisciplinary artist, she studied at the Sao Paulo University and at the Laval University in Quebec and has participated in a number of exhibitions at the Centre Vu, the Chambre Blanche, and at the Lieu in Quebec. Her digital prints are produced at the Sagamie center in Chicoutimi where she completed several residencies. In Montreal, she presented her work within the group exhibition at the textile distribution center, Diagonal.

Caroline Andrieux