"Tales of Flames" - Manuela Telesca

20th September - 31st December 2015

On Sunday 20th September 2015, at the International Art Gallery – Study Center for Mediterranean Culture’s premises, Manuela Telesca’s sculpture solo exhibition will be inaugurated.

Eclectic and sui generis artist, Manuela Telesca is one of the four artists that, through the Gallery, have been selected for the International Contemporary Art Biennial of Florence that was held from 17-25 October 2015. During the evening Mr.prof. Giovanni Cafarelli, dr. Aniello Ertico, director of the Gallery, dr. Mariateresa Gino of the Pinacoteca Provinciale of Potenza and the art historian Rossella Batassa will have their speeches. The artist will attend the opening.

In the title of this solo exhibition is shown the essence of her art, “Tales of Flames”, the flames by which she creates surprising artworks. Not exclusively metals, but also stones, plaster, colours, which together create unique artworks. And then the jewels, real miniature sculptures as a result of her academic studies and her creativity, that nowadays Manuela associates to her sculptures in a constant dialectic exchange of beauty and strength.

Manuela Telesca was born in Potenza. She studied jewelry-making at the Riaci Academy, Florence, then advanced jewelry and study of precious gems at the Jewelery Acedemy of Florence. Then, for a decade, she had been practicing jewelry working side by side with talented goldsmiths in Florence. That was the period when she began to study sculpture and the results are clearly visible nowadays. Back to Potenza in 2000 she opened a studio where she started telling stories of metals (gold and silver) intertwined with precious stones: particular jewels as sculptures (one-of-a-kinds and limited editions). Two solo exhibitions, one in 2004 (Galleria Teknè, Potenza) and one in 2008 “Fluide Metamorfosi” at the Museo Provinciale il Potenza. Many have been both the group exhibitions (14 from 2004 to 2011) and the solso, still featuring jewels and sculptures.

Following the three exhibitions dedicated to painting, starting with the one of the new premises in Venosa on the 21st January 2015, Porta Coeli hosted high-impact suggestive sculptures as, how Aniello Ertico writes in his foreword to the catalogue “her world is female, the only capable of embracing human reason and divine madness, the only capable of explaining love beyond the word love. The only where it is possible to imagine and feel the fertility of flames that lies beyond the warmth of fire".