Lucia Sammarco Pennetier - Ingaggio di Segni su carta

Lucia Sammarco Pennetier was born in Milan in 1980, she works and lives in Milan.

Graduated in History of Art in Italy, she begins her artistic project focusing on the creation of frontier objects - experimetal works blending art, fashion and design. In occasion of her first exhibition "Conversation Pieces" at Claudia Gian Ferrari's gallery in 2007, she presented her first series of small walking sculptures: works conceived as sculptures that can be worn. From this, she explored her research using different mediums and new forms of expression like photography, works on paper and a project of installations in which she elaborated a new personal language of three-dimensional "signs".

She exhibited in Italy, Belgium, Germany and France. Her works were included in numerous public and private collections both in Italy and abroad as Museum of Fashion and Costume of Milan and Foundation’s Villa Necchi Campiglio and Costa's Contemporary Art Collection.

Main solo and group exhibitions (selection):

Milan, Rossana Orlandi’s Gallery (group exhibition - 2007 and 2009) - Milan, Claudia Gian Ferrari’s Gallery, “Conversation Pieces” (solo show-2007) - Antonio Colombo’s Art gallery (group exhibition - 2010) - Berlin, ”Small walking sculptures” Modus Möebel (solo show- 2009/2010) - Torino, Palazzo Bertalazone di San Fermo /Allegretti’s Contemporary Art gallery (group exhibition- 2011) - Vestiti, Cagliari (group show - 2011) - Milan, “Instant Design: Atti fruibili” Triennale Museum (group show 2011) - Milan, “Di segni ” Antonia Jannone’ s Art Gallery (solo show- 2012) - Mantova, Palazzo Massarani (group show- mai 2012) - Milan, Miart 2012 with Zaira Mis’s Artiscope gallery - Bruxelles, Art on paper (otctober 2012) - Bruxelles “Women’s Roundabout” Zaira Mis’s Artiscope gallery (group show -2012-2013) - Museo del Novecento "Claudia Gian Ferrari, Collezionista, gallerista", (group exhibition- 2013) - Scarlino (GR) -Spazio Transiti, Contemporary Art “Wind as Energy” (group show 2013). Selected in the international contemporary MiniArtextil Art Textil’s contest, her work was presented in Como, Villa Olmo (october 2012), Paris- Montrouge (january 2013) and Venice (june 2013).Ghent 2014, Cecilia jaime Gallery - Bruxelles, Artiscope Gallery, Dyptique, Triptique, Polyptique” (group show) 2014- Hasselt (Belgium) , Thirtynine39, “Overlaps-Coincidenze”, (group show 2014) - Milan, Museo Palazzo Morando “Ritratto di gruppo Conversation Pieces” (group show 2014) - Ghent, Cecilia Jaime gallery “Summer Camp” ( group show 2014) - Ghent, Cecilia Jaime gallery (group show 2015)- Bruxelles, Artiscope Gallery, “Assolo italiano”, (group show 2016) - Bruxelles, OutoftheBox “Bloembox” (group show 2016) - France, Musée  de l’Olivier “Souffle de jarres” (group show 2016) - Bruxelles, OutoftheBox, “Ehi Marie!” (group show 2016) - Bruxelles, Art pour l’Accueil (group show 2016) - Angers, Musèe Jean Lurcat XI triennale Mini Textiles (2017) - Venice, “Lines and movements”, VeniceArtProjects, (2017).

Equilibrium, lightness, wonder, harmony—these words hold the key to the poetics of Lucia Sammarco Pennetier, a refined artist who combines a special sensitivity for reducing matter with an exploration of the boundaries between art and day-to-day life, creative talent with the refinement of the draftswoman who has a knack for re-evoking the motifs of architecture and design. Her works contain a very subtle figurative thread that diverges from reality to become a simple container for a void, one that is sketched out delicately in an interplay of light and shadow. Each individual element in her quest has a specific meaning that contributes to creating the artist’s personal stylistic lexicon. In her wall installations – delicate constructions of wires and fabrics held together by small magnets – Lucia Sammarco Pennetier explores the introduction of a volume into an environment, the development of a perspective, the relationship between background and foreground. Reduction is taken to the limit. Her anti-materialism is a sensation more auditory than tactile. The lines interweave and re-form, constructing a multi-level space that opens to our gaze. Intrinsic in their mobility is the dimension of living time; the breath of air is made visible exclusively through its effect on things. And indeed, these works quiver softly with a change in the air, in search of stability. The small magnets placed at critical nodes seek a balance. What the artist likes about magnets is the intrinsic indomitability of their nature, the strength of their perseverance in seeking an equilibrium. And so it is only natural that she uses them to support the steel wires and bits of velvet in her Postcards, enclosed in small plexiglas showcases (but the magnets, placed on the back of the work, remain hidden to our eyes). They are works characterized by deformations and gaps, by a succession of seams, curves, and fractures that form harmonious silhouettes. They might be marks made with straight lines, like a horizon, which allow the mind and the heart to slow down, they hint at a space within the rush of contemporary existence, they inspire a sense of immobility among the illusions of a world crowded with distractions. The may compose themselves into elements of a narrative, a calling to memories and experiences, or they may create open and ambivalent forms, shifting forms suspended somewhere between the real and the mental. Lucia Sammarco Pennetier invents objects and signs. She is not content with imparting form to them, imposing a style. She creates starting from nothing, she extends the limits of liberty. She engages with everything and makes use of everything. In her Sculture da passeggio [Small walking sculptures], forms, images, materials, and fabrics explode into dizzying visions in movement, suspended structures that at times conceal or at times highlight the gaze of those wearing them. They are linear designs transferred from paper into space: the void becomes a volume, at each step the wire traces an outline, the smallest element in the composition cleaves and designs the air. The observer gets lost in an enchanting reverie of technique and poetry.

text byEmma Gravagnuolo