Ditte Gantriis – Body & Soul

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Frutta is proud to present the first solo exhibition by Ditte Gantriis in Italy and her debut at the gallery.

The exhibition title Body & Soul follows an age-old holistic ideal of the complete human being at peace with both inner and outer world. But with the absolute sincerity of the expression also comes the fact that is now rendered a mere catchphrase popping up every so often in cheap beauty product catalogues, franchise health food stores and dubious new age workshops. With an intrinsic interest in surface and substance, style and content, Gantriis hopes to reclaim some of that hope Body & Soul might have inspired once.

Gantriis meditates on the fragile area where sincerity risks falling into pastiche or already have. Rather than directly criticizing some toxic process of commercialized image corruption she attempts instead to pull it back from spiraling down degradation to eventual neglect by reactivating its initial content on a new set of premises. Her aim is to short-circuit our habitual taste evaluation apparatus in order for us to re-appreciate the initial integrity of certain generic forms. The overlooked aesthetics of our daily routine suddenly leap from the background to claim their place in the world revealing them to be loaded with desire.

Entering the exhibition the visitor is greeted by giant wicker baskets. You maneuver around one, sneak past another while a third looms over you. These are no tattered waste paper baskets stuck in the corner of some nondescript office cubicle, nor are they mass-produced faux artisanal decor in the window of a quaint marina shop. By their scale alone we are forced to see them, to not only notice but to actually appreciate their craftsmanship.

Along the walls wavy monochromes dance an enticing hula. Shapes so often replicated in novelty salt and pepper-shakers, suburban hairdresser-mirrors, decorative glass knickknacks. Here the rolling forms are stripped naked to linger between object, painting, motif and form. Meanwhile, dotted out through the exhibition Baboons fight, play, love and rest. The secret lives of monkeys interweave the colorful but otherwise formal elements of the show to perhaps represent some disarticulated subtext or even manifesting the latent desires lurking beneath aesthetic surfaces of all kinds.

Still the eternal hula continues, Body & Soul.

Rolf Nowotny

* Simultaneously, we will present Time Clock: Dead or Alive, a solo exhibition by Alex Rathbone at Hadrian - our project space.