LA DANSE DES FAUX PAS. UN RITUAL
Nazzarena Poli Maranotti
Text by Giacomo Mercuriali
Until January 25th, 2025
A+B Gallery is pleased to present La danse des faux pas. Un rituel, a new solo exhibition by Nazzarena Poli Maramotti, marking the artist’s return to exploring the theme of portraiture. This subject, which was a cornerstone of her first solo show at the gallery (Portraits. Anatomia di un ritratto, 2012), now re-emerges intertwined with the passage of time, transforming into an investigation of perception and becoming.
The exhibition features thirty self-portraits painted on small-format canvases, measuring 30×25 cm, where the artist has reflected on herself—not to capture a simple image, but to chase her own reflection through shifting fragments. Each work becomes a meeting ground between what is seen and what eludes, between the face that observes and the one that dissolves. Painting in front of a mirror thus transcends the purely technical act, challenging the very identity of the subject: each image, rather than capturing a resemblance, narrates a fragmentation, an apparent distance between what is seen and what one is.
In this context, returning to portraiture for Nazzarena Poli Maramotti does not mean repeating what has already been done, but rediscovering a practice that allows her to explore the present through the lens of the past. The subjects that resurface—flower vases, faces, and details that define the everyday—are not merely revisited but transformed.
Though each brushstroke may seem to suggest a “misstep” or represent a mistake, every stumble ultimately becomes a path to discovering something new, an opening to the “adjacent possible.” Borrowed from biologist Stuart Kauffman, this concept describes everything close to the existing, ready to emerge through small variations or new combinations. Similarly, in the self-portrait series, each painting becomes a window into what could be—a way to multiply meanings and expand the boundaries of representation.
The painting process, like the mirror that accompanied it, allowed Poli Maramotti to confront the contradictions of seeing and defining oneself. In this repetitive ritual, reminiscent of Borges’ obsessive cataloging in The Library of Babel or Telmo Pievani’s reflections on the relationship between order and chaos, there emerges an attempt to grapple with the complexity of reality. Painting thus becomes a response to the overwhelming infinite possibilities that each choice leaves behind—a way to transform doubt into action and uncertainty into image.
The exhibition title, La danse des faux pas. Un rituel, encapsulates this very tension. The dance of missteps is not a declaration of failure but a journey that embraces errors and contradictions, making them an essential part of a process of disassembly and recomposition. Like a shamanic or alchemical practice, the artist breaks herself apart to find herself again, allowing each painting to narrate a fragment of this journey.