Margherita Morgantin uses a range of media in her work: from performance and video (for which she is internationally known) to drawing, photography and installation. Her artistic research originates from the observation and description of concrete things or situations in order to open them up to an ulterior state. Observing and imagining become two moments in her work which co-exist fluidly and without interruption: as in her videos, drawing may be overlaid on the film, underlining the metaphorical value, or it may be in a reciprocal state of dissolving and transforming.
Contact and co-existing, observing and imagining, but with her eyes open. It is this open interval which animates Morgantin’s work. The strongly individual aspect of her work in actual fact holds an invitation to activate our own imaginative ability, so that from a situation which seems to have no way out, from a condition of possible shipwreck, that which will allow us to re-emerge comes out.
One of her most recent works, shown for the first time at the Galleria Contemporaneo, seems to perfectly encapsulate this. It is based on the use of a common object, but one which is indispensable in case of being shipwrecked: a life belt. But this is not the only element taken from the ensemble of common things. Also the reflective material, normally used for safety purposes, is transformed into a new icon, without losing any of its concrete nature (as happens in the large image of the work “Catarifrangente”). In the same way that the thermographic surveys used for observing the effects of the wind on the earth’s surface) can be read as a reference to phenomena of turbulence. It is difficult not to see how research such as that undertaken by Margherita Morgantin becomes a broad reflection upon the times we live in.

GALLERIA CONTEMPORANEO

Mestre-Venezia, Italy

www.galleriacontemporaneo.it