Italian poet and artist Mirella Bentivoglio鈥檚 images and objects use words in quietly challenging ways. In this retrospective she often toys with the Italian letters 'E'and 'O' that stand respectively for the English words "and" and "or." Using their imbedded meanings of inclusion and otherness as a jumping off point for images, she repeatedly pushes the letter forms into big three-dimensional graphic shapes or into small unexpected fluxus-bred objects.
They intrigue most when she reaches for the experience of words as an ongoing poetry of unfolding meanings that plays off the stuff of the real world. To do that she makes books out of everything from polished marble to dirt or flattened tin cans and collaged or photographic images that richly allude to everything from myth to history, commerce and oppression.