This March, I traveled to northern Italy to install the site-specific painting “Swathe” in a stunning 17th century residence-turned-contemporary art center. The work was on view from April 21 - May 26, showcasing 8 international artists’ usage of line.
Mikelle Standbridge, found of Casa Regis and curator, wrote the following:
American painter Natalie Lanese [engages] the social and visual inheritance of Casa Regis in her large-scale, site-specific piece "Swathe". Her abstract painting is immersive, not only because it is 10 meters long and envelopes the room from floor to ceiling, as the title implies, but it activates visual complicity through a phenomenon called disruptive camouflage. Based on early 20th C. studies of perception, animals with stripes, like zebras, although eye-catching, were actually harder to pinpoint in nature - a painting technique used for a period by the British military (WWI) for warships. The exhibition room at Casa Regis is as varied as nature, but from vestiges of human taste - late Baroque ceiling frescoes, mural prints, biblical scenery in the boiserie, bi-coloured hexagon floor tiles... Lanese's vibrant and vivid longitudinal stripes actually make a seamless transition because of the existing competing patterns, styles, colour palettes and geometries.
Read more about the exhibition here:
