The Lady, or The Tiger?

Solo Show at Divario gallery, Rome

"The Lady, or the Tiger? is the first solo exhibition in Rome by Michela Picchi, a young multifaceted artist whose creative talent is naturally ex- pressed through various means.  Her own personal style touches and contaminates every artistic form without boundaries or limits. In fact, she herself does not like to define or label her art. Her somewhat chimerical, sometimes hallucinogenic and undoubtedly pop style is expressed in simple shapes and dynamic figures, vitalized by the chromatic intensity of black, pink, red, yellow, ivory and turquoise. The clean and precise lines delimit closed and fluid spaces, while the color, flat, free of nuances and shadows, fills the “voids” of a calibrated and never predictable composition.

Dominant protagonists in her works are the horse and the tiger, although the feline, with its hypnotic pattern, represents for Michela Picchi a priv- ileged figure from the dawn of her artistic production. King of all animals - in Chinese culture - the tiger, due to its wild nature, is considered a symbol of power, instinctive force, royalty and protection. On the other hand, the horse, proud and elegant animal, symbol of indom- itable drives and libidinal energy, on the psychological level represents the unconscious. It is no coincidence that these two figures are some- times co-protagonists in the dreamlike imagination of the author. Taming them both means to mastering your inner world. The title of the exhibition is an allegorical expression, inspired by a short story written by Frank Richard Stockton for The Century magazine in 1882, “The Lady, or the Tiger?”. A phrase that the British use to describe a dilemma, a problem that cannot be solved because any choice is un- acceptable. Michela Picchi’s work is substantiated in this “dilemme cornélien”: magnetic forces attract and repel each other like the opposite poles of a magnet, on one side the woman and on the other, the tiger. One cannot exist without the other."  by Filippo Tranquilli

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