Studio Exhibition: Isabella Ducrot: Erotici

Capitain Petzel is pleased to announce a new exhibition by Isabella Ducrot in the Studio space of the gallery. The exhibition will be centered around the artist’s sensual drawings, which she refers to as Erotici. The threads that bind these works are the notions of touching and feeling, which resonate particularly in these times where physical contact has become to many an almost distant memory.

Ducrot has been depicting erotic scenes since the late nineties, though has seldom shown them in public. Her gestural works both large and small share a tenderness and sensuality which contribute to a narrative of sexual duality as a key to interpreting the world. The majority of the presented works are drawings on Chinese paper. The artist claims that this material was the starting point for their creation, finding iconographic reference in the venerable erotic drawings of the Oriental World. Eros, the largest of the works on paper calls on the other hand to the eponymous ancient Greek philosophical term, referring to sensual or passionate love, from which the very term erotic is derived. The concept of Eros has also been used in philosophy and psychology in a wider sense to describe something of a “life energy” — a conception very much in line with Ducrot’s engagement with the subject. Among the works on show is also a work on textile; a tribute in this exhibition to the artist’s preferred medium.

Isabella Ducrot’s recent solo shows include Galerie Mezzanin, Geneva (2020); Capitain Petzel, Berlin (2019); Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne (2019); and Spazio Parlato, Palermo (2018). In 2014 she had a major exhibition at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome. In 1993 and 2011 she showed her work at the Venice Biennale. Isabella Ducrot is also the author of numerous publications, including Women’s Life, 2021; Eros, 2020; La stoffa a quadri (also translated and published in English as The Checkered Cloth), 2019; Suonno. Il sonno e il sogno nella canzone napoletana, 2012; Fallaste Corazón, 2012; Pensiero religioso ed elettricità, 2011; La Matassa Primordale, 2008; and Bianca di Pelle, 1995