NICOLETTA CECCOLI & YUKA SAKUMA
Curated by Caro
August 19 - September 16, 2017
Nicolette Ceccoli
In her first collection for Corey Helford Gallery, “Hide and Seek”, Ceccoli conveys a child’s universe in sweetly endearing and equally frightful images. “In my mind, I always look for a way to hide from reality. Nonetheless, I very well know there is no safe hiding place,” she says. In a series of 8 new acrylic and colored pencil works on paper, she portrays children in the act of hiding. Her characters disguise themselves with masks and costumes, acting as make-believe characters that recall Little Red Riding Hood, little girls “gone bad” or that refuse to grow up. Ceccoli’s imagery is a product of her dreams and her unconscious, an expression of her own inner thoughts, impulses and desires:
“Reality is banned in its rational form and so it came back in the form of a disturbing unconscious nightmare that inflates and animates toys. A sense of threat runs around the girls I represent. They're alone, on their own, and all they want is someone to play with. Common toys perceive them as a menacing entity to expel from their world,” she explains. “It’s difficult to understand exactly if this is a product of a corrupted fantasy - or if reality itself has corrupted the fantasy. It's a game of hide and seek.”
Yuka Sakuma
The gap between adolescence and experience is endlessly explored in Yuka Sakuma’s work, who makes her US debut with her series, “Miniature Garden”. In Sakuma’s ink paintings, innocence can be found in the growth of one-self and the trials of falling in love. Most of her paintings portray young girls in a state of transformation and development, physically and emotionally. Their fragility and vulnerability is mirrored in the nature that surrounds them, a miniature garden blooming with flowers like tulips, pansies, water lilies and cherry blossoms.
On her portrayal of young women, Sakuma shares: “I am drawn to girls in particular, not simply for their gender, but because of their femininity. “There is a freshness and innocence in the body and action of girls, who are susceptible to a wide range of emotion. While their hearts are still not yet mature, they are cute and fragile. What is to be lost when becoming an adult, I find that to be truly endearing."