Vickie Vainionpää
Metamorphoses at Real Belvedere di San Leucio
Galleria Nicola Pedana
May 28th – July 15th, 2023
OPENING: Saturday, May 27th, 6pm
Real Belvedere di San Leucio
Via del Setifiicio 5, CE, Caserta, Italy

In her first ever institutional solo show, Vickie Vainionpää collaborates with Galleria Nicola Pedana to bring her Gaze series to the Real Belvedere di San Leucio. The works in this exhibition reference Ovid’s “Metamorphoses.” They specifically invoke the “Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne” in response to a scene from the same poem painted in fresco by Italian Neoclassical painter Fedele Fischetti on the ceiling of the Grand Dining Room at the Belvedere di San Leucio. When titling this show Vickie references both the “translative processes” used in her work along with the “ever-evolving relationship painting has shared with the technologies of its time. In order to create this “post-digital reimagining of Fischetti” she uses “eye-tracking software to directly translate her own gaze of this work into visualised Bézier curves and stylised spines” she draws on “the act of gazing itself, through technological allowance [which] functions here as a conduit of interpretation and transformation.” In her practice, Vickie considers the impact of technology on the process of painting and investigates the relationship between natural forces and digital processes. By embracing new digital means of reading space and content, the works draw attention to the ever-changing relationship between the human body and digital technology.

Vickie Vainionpää (b. 1992, Toronto) is an emerging artist living and working in Montréal. She holds a B.A Honors with Studio Art Specialization from the University of Waterloo and has exhibited her work extensively both nationally and internationally. Vainionpää was a 2021 resident at Palazzo Monti (Brescia, Italy), and has been awarded impressive accolades such as the Liz Edwards Memorial Award and the Louis Muhlstock Endowment (Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity).

Images courtesy of: Galleria Nicola Pedana, Vickie Vainionpää, Real Belvedere di San Leucio (Photographed by Danilo Donzelli)

Text excerpt from exhibition text by James Frew