Elena El Asmar – Immagine immaginare immaginata

The new exhibition season at Assab One opens with Immagine immaginaria immaginata, a solo exhibition by Elena El Asmar, in which light, matter, and memory interact to shape images that are constantly evolving.
There is Lebanon and Milan, the East and the West, objects, spices, and memories that intertwine in Elena’s studio to shape a personal geography, both real and imagined. Then there is light, an essential element that passes through matter and alters our perception of it. Glass, fabric, and paper interact with light in different ways: they let it pass through, hold it, fragment it. The works emerge through traces, transparencies, and overlapping layers, in an uncertain space between what appears and what remains.
In the landscapes of Elena’s memory, Adelina von Fürstenberg finds an echo of the thought of the Persian mystic Sohrawardî and his “inner Orient,” a place towards which memory and imagination can point the way.
The three works on view, L’esercizio del lontano, Arioso operoso, and the Siparietti, inhabit this distance between matter and gaze, presence and memory, near and far. The image appears, transforms, and withdraws, leaving the viewer the space to continue imagining it.