ARTE CONTEMPORANEA ED EVENTI CULTURALI

Swann Art Gallery

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Swann Art Gallery

+39 333 2455018

info@swannarte.com

Galleria d'Arte Contemporanea ed Eventi Culturali

“… La guardava; un frammento dell'affresco appariva nel viso e nel corpo di lei, e da quel momento cercò sempre di ritrovarvelo, sia che le fosse accanto o semplicemente pensasse a lei…” M. Proust

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MICHELLE HOLD

VOYAGE DE DECOUVERTE

a cura di Riccardo Dellaferrera

09/04/26 - 06/05/2026

The exhibition Voyage de découverte — a title chosen in French to evoke the sensitive and temporal universe of Marcel Proust — presents the painterly work of Michelle Hold as an experience of passage, a journey that does not end in the mere viewing of images, but unfolds as an exploration of time and its perception.

At the core of this exhibition project lies a reflection rooted in the transformation of thought between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when time gradually ceased to be understood as a linear and measurable succession, becoming instead lived experience, continuity, and memory in action. It was the philosopher Henri Bergson who defined this dimension as duration: an uninterrupted flow in which the past does not disappear, but continues to live within the present, modifying and enriching it.

This same conception is found in the writing of Proust, where time is not something that is lost, but something that can suddenly resurface, revealing itself through involuntary memory; and in the music of Claude Debussy, which abandons the rigid structures of tradition to create fluid, suspended soundscapes in which time expands and transforms into a sensory experience.

It is within this horizon that Michelle Hold’s painting takes shape. In her works, the mark is never description nor the construction of a closed form, but rather the trace of a gesture unfolding over time — a living record of a process that continues to resonate across the surface of the canvas. Lines traverse space without delimiting it; they overlap, break, and resume, allowing a stratification to emerge in which nothing is truly erased, but everything remains as active memory.

The canvas thus presents itself not as a finished space, but as an open field, crossed by movements and tensions that invite the viewer’s gaze to travel, to pause, and to return to the marks, following their rhythm and variations. In this sense, the work does not offer itself as an immediate and definitive image, but as an experience that unfolds in the time of viewing, asking the viewer to engage with the very process of its formation.

This dimension also finds an important resonance in American Action Painting, for which the canvas becomes a space of action and the painting the visible outcome of an event. However, in Michelle Hold’s work, the gesture may activate with less force and incisiveness, yet it does not exhaust itself in the energy of the act; rather, it settles, stratifies, and endures, transforming the work into a true memory of its own occurrence.

In this sense, the painting simultaneously configures itself as an inquiry in time — because it arises from a real succession of gestures — and an inquiry of time — because it renders visible its deeper nature, made of continuity, returns, and superimpositions. The work therefore does not merely occupy space, but becomes the place where time manifests, settles, and becomes perceptible.

The title Voyage de découverte alludes precisely to this movement: not a journey through space, but a passage through duration — an experience in which what is seen is not merely an image, but the very process of its emergence, still active in the gaze of the observer.

The references to Proust, Bergson, and Debussy are not merely theoretical coordinates, but constitute an integral part of the exhibition’s curatorial project, which also unfolds through a series of events designed to explore the theme of time in its various forms. The exhibition will be accompanied by a musical event dedicated to French music between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries — featuring compositions by Claude Debussy, Francis Poulenc, and Erik Satie — in which the temporal dimension is expressed through fluid and non-linear sonic forms; a talk focused on the relationship between time and art, with particular attention to informal language; and finally, a meeting dedicated to literature and the philosophy of art in Proust, aimed at deepening the connection between memory, perception, and artistic creation.

The exhibition thus takes shape as a multifaceted experience, in which painting, music, and thought intertwine, offering the public not only a space for viewing, but a true span of time to be traversed. This approach resonates fully with the spirit of Swann Art Gallery, whose name recalls the figure of Swann — Proust’s alter ego in the early phase of À la recherche du temps perdu — and reflects its cultural and curatorial vocation, grounded in the interplay of disciplines and the ongoing dialogue between visual arts, literature, and music.

Riccardo Dellaferrera, March 2026