Nicola Bolla

During his entire life, Nicola Bolla has been collecting objects of different genres and styles, from the precious metal crowns used in the past to adorn the Statues of the Saints to the extraordinary XIX century greeting cards, through to his collection of scale cardboard models of monuments from all over the world.

The same sophisticated taste that transformed his own house into an incredibly fascinating “wunderkammer” (the room where in the XIX century the eccentric European nobles would collect their most precious, singular and exotic objects), we find in his entire body of work that ranges from his pastel colors paintings, whose subject is the magic world of those fairy tales that animated our childhood dreams, to his suggestive site specific installations and sculptures, made with Swarovksi crystals and playing cards, where that same world seems to come to life and invites the spectator to become part of it.

The artist was born in Saluzzo, near Torino, Italy in 1962 and currently lives and works in Torino.  He has shown extensively in Europe and in the United States.  Amongst his solo shows to be mentioned “Silenzi” at Galleria Maria Cilena and “Circus” at Galleria Tega Arte Contemporanea, both in Milan, Italy; and “Fairy Tales” and “Aquarium” at Nohra Haime Gallery in New York.  He was part of several group shows such as: “Animali” at Galleria Forni, Bologna; “The Freight Elevator Project II” curated by Ombretta Agró for the 2002 d.u.m.b.o. art under the bridge festival in Brooklyn, NY; “Guardaroba”, curated by Grazia de Palma in Bari, Italy; “Fabulae Fabularum” curated by Ombretta Agró at Transhudson Gallery in New York City; “No-Random” curated by Chiara Guidi and Ron Lang at the Italian Cultural Institute in Amsterdam; “III International Biennial of Cetinye” curated by Andrei Erofeevu, Pontus Hulten, Nikolai Petrovic, in Montenegro; “Versus II” curated by Marisa Vescovo in Carignano, (TO); and “Avant-Garde walk in Venice” curated by Marc Poittier, Off Biennale Project for the 1995 Venice Biennale.

Private lift is a site-specific installation conceived for a freight elevator.  It consists in covering up the walls of the elevator cabin by hanging from the ceiling sheets of thick nylon.  On the inner face of the nylon sheets the artist painted hundreds of colorful butterflies.  The effect is surreal; the artist wants to create a very intimate space that the viewer can interact with almost on a one-to-one experience.  The visitor finds him/herself totally immersed, physically and emotionally, at least for the duration of the short elevator ride, in a journey that will take him/her towards the poetic world of fairy tales

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