Marisa Mertz at the Serpentine Gallery.

Marisa Mertz is an important Italian artist (born in 1926 in Turin) who didn't get the recognition she deserved in her early years & the only woman in the Arte Povera movement. 

I was really excited to see her work exhibited at the Serpentine Gallery. On the day I was visiting the gallery I was supposed to go with my Uni group and my tutor unfortunately I had lost them so I went on my own. In the exhibition one can see her use of industrial materials such as metal sheets, metal containers which are more associated with the movement Arte Povera who embraced poor materials or what was considered low materials so to subvert the elitist status/ role of what art object had become  in a western  consumerist based society. 

What Marisa Mertz does different is the way she combines cold, industrial, ordinary materials with other different materials which are more associated with the feminine, crafts, domesticity using a variety of textiles & knitting. The knitting pieces are done using nylon, copper, iron again materials used by Arte Povera  but done in a delicate way with a careful balance between hard & soft forming geometric patterns such triangles, squares, circles  which made me think of voids some of them fairly small in their scale if compared with work from male artists of the Arte Povera giving them an inner sense of vulnerability (see also image of knitted shoe). The assembled pieces can be traced back to Alexander Calder & Pablo Picasso but have a distinct feminine touch which gives them strength.

The metal containers give out a cold steely feeling but then they have been filled with soft wax.

In the first room a portrait worked on beautifully with  a gentle blend of colourful lines of soft pastels with a linear rhythm that create  loose formless  abstract faces with no distinct identity. Which again give an intimate feeling to the overall portrait inverting what is it to be sacred in the arts especially in Italy where there is so much of it, she brings feeling into the object so the art work becomes one with life.

 In one other room filled with small clay sculptures playful unfired heads with expressions that go from mute to serene, they take you away from rationality but more into an intimate space this due to the their small size & expression they reminded me in their simplicity of Bizantine Icons with an extra element of fragility. I did wonder also if  artists Thomas Schutte (saw his exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery a while back) studied her work because his heads look so much like Maris Mertz heads...

In the room next door hanging down from the ceiling layered floating intertwined metal sheets  that remind you of organic bodies, organic shapes of on going growth. 

The exhibition must be popular because when I asked  for a leaflet in reception they said they had run out also I couldn't find any postcards of her work. I wanted to give a card to ma but there was nothing on sale just weird and disappointing. While hovering around the reception desk I noticed another work  which was outside of the exhibition area, literally on the reception desk by Marisa Mertz : a box filled with wax and flowers again a small intimate art work that could have gone un-noticed. 

I looked at it then wondered off into beautiful Hyde Park, great setting for a gallery (peaceful, quiet).