Sunday, April 29, 2018. 1–7PM. Verdiana Patacchini & Franco Losvizzero. Spring Open House 2018 features new exhibitions, programming, performances, and open studios all day. Mana Contemporary - 888 Newark Avenue - Jersey City, NJ. Shuttle service will depart every half hour from Milk Studios (450 West 15th Street, New York, NY 10011) starting at 12:30 and ending 5PM. Returning shuttles from Mana will run every half hour from 2–7:30PM.

Verdiana and Franco are friends and both from Rome. They works on subconscious by two different views. This is their first studio together and they are pleased to invite You to their first 'open studio' in Mana Contemporary. 

VERDIANA PATACCHINI
AKA Virdi, was born in Orvieto, Italy in 1984. She received her MFA from Via di Ripetta Academy of Fine Art in Rome in 2009. In 2011 she took part in the 54th Biennale di Venezia, for the Italian Pavilion and in 2012 her artwork La Veronica won the Catel Prize. On January 2016 Verdiana was awarded with ESKFF artist residency at MANA Contemporary. On march 2016 the Emmeotto Gallery of Rome presented her solo show Unconscious Mind at the Consul General of Italy in New York. She currently lives and works in New York.

Italian artist based in New York, Verdiana Patacchini or 'Virdi', expresses her subconscious through her dreamlike tapestries, which transform her unique perceptions of reality into paintings. In her work, she encourages the process of painting by layering painted canvas cutouts to add an additional dimension to the composition alluding to her inner thoughts, while the scroll format in which she presents her work makes reference to ancient forms of documentation.

FRANCO LOSVIZZERO
Born in 1973 in Rome, Italian artist Franco Losvizzero was a nonconformist from the beginning: he started to work on subconscious at art school, by using transcendental meditation (he started when he was 11 years hold) preferring instead to follow his intuition. Now internationally-acclaimed, with solo-show in Rome, Berlin, Venice (3 times at the Biennal), Milan, Naples, Miami (in Art Basel and Scope art fairs) and New York (in October 2017 his last solo show: Francamente). His body of work is immense, is singular, provocative influence uncontested.

Using a variety of media and materials, and mostly recognized for his “poetic”: performance, mechanic sculptures, drawings, glass sculptures, photo/video and films (as cinema director), losvizzero’s impulses have been fueled by obsession, the subconscious, dreams, surrealism, primal forces, and mythology. Using unconventional methods such as painting in altered states, painting blindfolded, or with his hands, Losvizzero manipulates form, composition, and perception to capture extreme emotions. He searches for the limits of an image, in order to push past them and release hidden energies.