BIOGRAFIA
Born in Parma, Gabriella Di Trani graduated from Accademia di Belle Arti di Rome. She worked at the Parma Istituto di Anatomia, illustrating scientific images of anatomy. From 1977-79 she worked with a team of psychiatrists in the Ospedale Santa Maria della Pietà on an art project whose aim was to treat patients through painting and performing. She has been exhibiting sice ’79, using a style that suggests a metropolitan “fun-fair”, with metaphorical allusions and ironic implications.
She works in various forme: paintings, triptychs, books made of wood and other materials, a long narration in time and space. As graphic designer for the Teatro di Roma in the early 1980s, she created scenery and costums, introduced into the artistic scene performances with a visual and musical sense related to pictorial installation and exhibits. In that period Emilio Villa wrote for the catalogue Il Beato Creatore ( The Blessed Creator) that “Gabriella Di Trani, is an eye excavating and rummaging, in shoddy warehouses stuffed with ingenuous emblems, clotted neo-freudian pastimes (junghian, more so): an opening onto an instinctive revision of a soft model of environments of repression made of amulets, abandoned tools, alchemic delusions and illusions, standard schemes, genocidal allusions, cultural absurdities and deafness deposited in their storehouse, as though in boutiques of folklore rearranged through idealogical disorder”.
Di Trani attemps to highlight the contrasts and discrepancies of our daily life, to enter things, alluding to symbols of time and its allegorical components and following a thread without ignoring the indication of pop art that here, of course, becomes “other”. These are signs, signals, sounds, citations, comic-book hero games that cross our lives, merging with memories, ornaments, texts, fractions of art history, rolling along a tape of shallow time where everything exists here and now. Besides numerous shows in Italy and abroad, Di Trani has participated with Poligramma Gruppo 12 in interventions that aim to merge with the city and its environment. She has also participated in multi-medial projects with the Gruppo Sinestetico, as well as meetings and expositions with the StudiAperti&AertistiAssociati. Her installations made of natural elements are housed in the Opera Bosco, a museum of art in natura a Calcata,
She belongs to the associations Arte Fuori Centro in Rome, Arte da Mangiare in Milan and BAU in Viareggio. With the Milan Art Center she took part in camera 312-promemoria per Pierre, curated by R.Maggi, at 52nd Venice Biennale Internazionale d’Arte (2007). She has also attempted to create a virtual dimension of the image: in volume VI, ed. Bora, of the Storia dell’Arte Italiana del ‘900 by Giorgio Di Genova, we read that “Gabriella archieves an extraordinary visual and technological feat, setting into motion the production of “Tme Machine”, a sort of cradle or pseudo-aquarium where her paintings seem to be floating such as water, which in however completely lacking”. In 2009 at the Studio Arte Fuori Centro with the installation SANMICHELEINISOLA “almost irreverently she leaves a personal, cathartic reflection on the life-death dualism, made more fluid, and less positive in the definition of overly-certain demarcations, by the existence of the memory that ceaselessly superimposes and confuses them”. (Ivana D’Agostino). In 2009 she contributed a poetic intervention to the Virtual Mercury House, 53nd Venice Biennale Internazionale d’Arte, curated by C. Davinio: and 2010, among others, to the performance SESSANTASECONDI, MA TUTTI PRIMI at Martrovereto curated by BAU. In 2011, with a presentation by Giorgio Di Genova, she took part in the 54nd Venice Biennale Internazionale d’Arte, Padiglione Italia, curated by Vittorio Sgarbi.
In 2012 he exhibited at the Studio Arte Fuori Centro, Rome, IL GIARDINO DELLE DELIZIE, installations, light, sound and images, edited by L.Rea a critical essay by G. Di Genova. In 2013 the Lavatoio Contumaciale, Rome presents Forme,Segni, Segnali, edited by T.Binga.In 2014, at Studio Arte Fuori Centro, Rome present the videoinstallation DAL MITO DI SERAPIDE ALL’ALLEGORIA DELLA PRUDENZA, curated by I. D’Agostino. Past exhibitions: 2015 at Lavatoio Contumaciale FRAGILI GUERRIERE, Rome, 2016 L’ARCHEOLOGIA DELL’IO, Tolfa. 2017, CODEX, Naples, TERRA TERRA MADRE, Natarea, Biennale del Libro d’Artista, Naples, DIASPORA, Palermo e XIV Rassegna d’Arte to Bozzolo curated by I. D?Agostino.For subsequent exhibitions check “Exhibitions”