Chiara Enzo

Chiara Enzo's haunting and unvarnished paintings meticulously capture fragmented bodies on a small scale. The enlarged patches of skin, freckles, and nicks, fuzzy neck napes, ribcages, and imprints of tight clothing create an unfamiliar and eerie effect. These images are derived from both real-life observation and various sources such as magazines, social media, and medical books from the past. Enzo's use of dense, textured marks on the surfaces of her paintings evoke a sense of touch, warmth, and tangible presence. As Enzo stated, skin is the most immediate site of stimulation and pain, as well as our boundary with the external world.

Enzo's latest installation, Conversation Piece, features more than twenty works presented as a total environment. The small scale of her paintings, along with their spatial arrangement, creates an intimate and immersive experience for the viewer. However, despite the tenderness and personal nature of Enzo's attention to the human figure, seen from such a close distance, it can also feel deeply ambiguous or even menacing. The skin portrayed in her work, offered for consumption, appears as delicate as a piece of fruit.