Paola Pivi: Come check it out

From the Statue of Liberty masked as an Afghani woman to colourful stacked mattresses, Milan-born artist Paola Pivi has a gift for bringing inanimate objects to life through lighthearted and ostentatious displays that reconsider nature as it relates to an artificial world.

Curated by Kanika Anand, Come check it out unfolds like an experimental playground as viewers take a stroll through Pivi’s ambitious and whimsical art. While at first glance the work may seem casual, as the title suggests, beneath her adorned surfaces lies a sharper edge that contemplates both ethical and ecological matters.

Pivi’s first major solo show in Canada, the exhibition includes sculptural installations like her life-size feather-adorned polar bears. Rendered in hues of magenta, electric blue and lime green, these majestic bears hang from trapezes, take part in yoga, and engage audiences through human-like poses. Simultaneously amusing and intimidating, they seem to embody our contradictory relationship with nature as both an awe-inspiring force and a resource for human greed and exploitation.

Pivi has lived in some surprising and remote locations. These diverse geographies and ecosystems have clearly shaped her art, which is spectacularly revealed in a large wall piece inspired by her iconic Pearl series. Constructed from a voluptuous layering of clear beads that cascade down, the work evokes the glistening and fragile arctic landscape. Equally seductive is an installation featuring 145 pairs of shoes, wall-mounted almost like trophies, with one pair worn and the other pristine. The piece pays homage to Andy Warhol, but also reflects on class, vanity, consumerism, the passage of time, and the environmental cost of consumption.

Through her unexpected juxtapositions and singular approach, Pivi transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary. She playfully and powerfully transports viewers to an upside-down world that challenges us to reimagine our relationship to nature.

contemporarycalgary.com