Freshness and Antiquity: Shiva Foresti

Below written blog post is from the critical text “VOCI” by Beatrice Resmini, for the catalog of “Incompleta Bellezza”, an exhibition curated by Ugo Riva organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art of Bozzolo (MN).

"[...] The temporal stratification so evident in the works of these artists becomes even more evident when, to take the pencil in hand, it is a young man like Shiva Foresti. His freshness is combined with the antiquity of a technique known and mastered to perfection, with absolute dedication and respect. His investigation travels on different tracks: on the one hand, nature becomes a pretext to investigate the intrinsic rhythm in creation, the full and the empty. The veins of the leaves become signs capable of interrupting the void in a perfect empty / full balance that nature already offers but that Shiva captures and exalts."

Shiva Foresti Art Leaves

"On the other hand, Foresti constantly investigates the technique, which he has received from tradition academic. The antiquity in this young artist is the antiquity of a layered and constructed knowledge contribution after contribution, innovation after innovation, by generations of artists who before him used graphics as a privileged technique. But at the same time antiquity is also given by the subjects that Shiva chooses to investigate: nature is the undisputed protagonist of his search. Nature combined with time. We perceive the fragrance of the twisted leaves under our fingers, we foresee them breaking into crumbs under our pressure, in Foresti's drawings there is life but also its deprivation."

Shiva Foresti Art Leaves 2

"In a reminder of the origin of still life, the leaves of Shiva twist in the sublime beauty of a nature that takes its course in creating beauty and perfection as well as in modifying, twisting, folding it. A sublime that becomes complete estrangement in the unnatural enlargement that these torn fragments of nature undergo as a result of Foresti's intervention. From the microscopic to the gigantic, in front of his works we perceive how little attention and care we put into observing the everyday, which, imposed on our gaze, becomes extraordinary. [...]"

To learn more about this amazingly talented artist Shiva Foresti, you can read the Story of the Artist. 

To see his profile page and his collection, please visit Shiva Foresti's Profile Page.

Shiva Foresti Art Leaves Upside Down