Judith Bartolani

Judith Bartolani sometimes sculpts the way she draws, with graphic shapes which are written in space, flat forms which just seem to manage to stay upright. In other instances, we find heavy volumes which crush each other and spread or are contained. The fact is that her sculptures seem to be caught in whirlwinds of memory. They launch themselves or settle in space the way the past emerges and installs itself in reality.
This serious and sensitive oeuvre attempts to formulate a relation with death. It is laden with memory, and becomes its receptacle. It is thus interested in the chaos of History, rites and funerals. It becomes a Pandora's box of the shapeless pains which mark and traverse our lives.
Books are part and parcel of these issues, they go hand in hand with the sculptures, or else exist independently. The collection becomes the object of a contemplation, it mixes writing with drawing as if trying to define the complexity of feelings through the gamut of representational possibilities. Translated by Simon Pleasance