THROUGH SEEING AND LISTENING, THE FANTASISED AND THE MANIFESTED body.

Across diverse mediums and form, the ‘human’ body, however transient, remains as a subject of events. What is seen, in the eyes of the mind, take place on surface, lens, material, and morph with one another, with the living moving body, disfiguring each other and reconfiguring themselves after consumption.
Embodied and disembodied appearances, reflect on the visceral and urgent presence of the human, live, body. At the start, the notion of mirror: a constant ever-changing image that is formed and deformed as each breath brings life to the body. Different media such as drawing, photography, printmaking, painting and video, interrelate with as output a universe of heterogeneous appearances, each with a common denominator: movement of the body and movement of the soul, between the gestural expression of charcoal drawing, the digital and post produced still and moving images, electroacoustic sounds, to the carefully crafted and re-elaborated copper plates delivering prints.
At the moment these are called side effects, each one a bi-product of the previous step in the process of feedback loop.
“anthropomorphs”; two dimensional images derived from the superimposition of drawing and moving body (drawing>photo>painting>print)
“hesitations”; the more visceral exploration of embodied voice-movement integration, exploring frequencies and resonances of vocal output rooted within the organs of the body
“ghosts”; are the anthropomorphs restituted a third dimension. Sculptures rendered independent to move again, suspended in space, relating to nothing but to their history and to one another.
“multiplicity”; anonymous portraits overlapped and stop-motion animated, searching to grasp the ever-changing nature of oneself, faced with memory and its loss, ancient stranger twins, imagined encounters or the union of multiplicity as one.

–

Irina Baldini studied at the
Institute of Arts of Florence (IT),
practiced in London and is
currently based in Amsterdam.
She specializes in antique
techniques in visual art practices
such as drawing, printmaking,
painting besides her long-term
profession as a dancer and
choreographer.
Irina explores traditional tools such
as printmaking ink, charcoal,
pastel. With these tangible
materials, her work is embodied
with appreciation of physical
presence. Her constant pursuit of
craftsmanship and physicality
creates a statement in contrast to
digital/virtual world we live in.
Each work rejects to be defined,
rather it wants to be appreciated
purely as an emotional and
sensory experience.

With a specialisation in Conservation and Restoration of antique techniques, from the Institute of Arts of Florence (IT), Irina’s practice in drawing, printmaking, book-binding meets her profession as a dancer and choreographer in OT301, Amsterdam, where she has been teaching and hosting workshops to introduce enthusiasts to the arts of Cyanotype, Etching, Monotype, Drypoint and Bookbinding as well as hosting life drawing sessions weekly
.
Her particular fascination and passion for the possibilities that traditional methods hold, have kept her interested in the bridge between blue-print (ciano-tipia) and other forms o printmaking. She has devised multiple ways of generating matrixes for this photo-sensitive printing technique that resemble closely the results obtained with xylo/calco/litho-graphies.
She is continually exploring this method and finding unconventional ways to revisit what established and finding new life or strategies to manoeuvre the technique and render it as flexible as the possibilities it allows.

WORKSHOPS in Amsterdam

Since 2016 Irina has been curating and hosting the yearly international printmaking exposium GRAPHICALL, in 4bid gallery Amsterdam, exhibiting Dutch and International artists working in the medium of printmaking alongside hosting a series of workshops and a symposium with guest speakers from the field of contemporary printmaking.

With this initiative she promotes a discussion on what printmaking is today and encourages a reconsideration of the graphic mediums as versatile and multifaceted.

www.irinabaldini.wordpress.com