Memoria Aperta by Barbara Paganin in Paris

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Barbara Paganin

For Paganin, the work starts with a search among the antique shops of Venice reclaiming unique objects and heirlooms. Some recurring elements point to her personal history yet each brooch contains details that viewers can re-configure according to their own individual fragments of memory.
Barbara Paganin is well known for her use of precious materials, but she has added techniques in glass, resin and dental acrylic over the years to complement her recovered elements. The brooches and neckpieces in this series have been designed as a single suite, on which the artist has worked continuously over the last several years.

Shown for the first time in its integrality in Paris, this body of works has been featured in museums and institutions abroad: the Palazzo Fortuny (Venice, 2014), the CODA Museum (Apeldoorn NL, 2015) and Philadelphia (Philadelphia Art Alliance, 2016).


About the artist:
Barbara Paganin studied metals and jewelry at the State Art Institute of Venice and sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts also in Venice. She taught professional drawing and design at the Art Institute Pietro Selvatico of Padua. Since 1988, she has been the Chair of Professional Design and Planning for Art of Metals and Jewelry at the State Institute of Art in Venice, now Michelangelo Guggenheim Art School. In 2002, she taught a Master Class at the Royal College in London. For more than 25 years, she has exhibited throughout Europe, including London, Vienna, Monaco, Gothenburg, Paris, and New York. Her first solo exhibition, AURA, was held at the Fondazione Galleria Bevilacqua La Masa. In 2008, she contributed more than thirty works to the large group exhibition Gioielli d'Autore in Padua. In 2015, the Oratorio San Rocco in Padova hosted an anthological solo exhibition, Dall'Orto alla soffitta (from the vegetable garden to the attic) presenting about one hundred and thirty works, starting from her early creations in the 1980's to the series Memoria Aperta. Her works are in the permanent collections of many museums including: The Victoria and Albert in London, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Museum of Modern Art in Ca 'Pesaro in Venice, Musée des Beaux Arts in Montréal, and LACMA in Los Angeles.