Handle With Care From Nicoletta Ceccoli Is The New Exhibition At Los Angeles’ Corey Helford Gallery

On The Table Read, “the best arts magazine in the UK“, children’s book illustrator Nicoletta Ceccoli holds major solo show, Handle With Care, at Corey Helford Gallery, premiering on October 29th in Gallery 3.

OPENING RECEPTION

October 29, 2022 | 7:00 pm – 11:00 pm

ON VIEW

October 29 – December 3, 2022

COREY HELFORD GALLERY

571 S. Anderson St. Los Angeles, CA 90033

Open: Tuesday-Saturday, 12:00 pm – 6:00 pm

Visiting Hours: Thursday-Saturday, 12:00 pm – 6:00 pm

(310) 287-2340

Handle With Care

Corey Helford Gallery (CHG) announces their next major solo show from San Marinian artist and children’s book illustrator, Nicoletta Cecolli, Handle With Care. Running from October 29^th in Gallery 3 through to December 3^rd.

The artist’s paintings explore how childlike wonder and innocence can curdle into emotional turmoil and darkness. Through this exhibition, Ceccoli invites you to explore a magical and wonderful world where good and evil are blurred between who is good, who is bad, and who is afraid. Ceccoli is known for her rich, dreamlike work, and says she likes to “offer a delectable balance of repulsive and attractive.” Adding, “What is beautiful and sweet often hides dark suggestions.”

Nicoletta Ceccoli

In her Handle With Care exhibition, Ceccoli brings together themes of love and loss, innocence and maturity, life and death, with an irresistible sense of humor and “psychological tension”, describing it as an “examination of my strengths and weaknesses.”

Cecolli said of her work, “I show our fragile nature as humans. I blend the childlike and innocent with the grotesque by painting adorable-looking porcelain toys to look like biological beings, sometimes wounded and disturbing to look at, featuring elements of the grotesque and the cute breaking down, which pull the viewer between these opposing poles.”

In one paiting, “Where Is My Mind?”, we see a fragile ballerina figurine in a pink tutu conjurng her own head from out of a top hat as she ponders the whereabouts of her own mind. In another, Little Red Riding Hood tames the big bad wolf with her quiet yet mighty charms.

Vulnerability

“Showing vulnerability is how I come to understand more about myself and the world I inhabit. Just like in life, you can see a duality in these works,” explains Nicoletta Ceccoli. “Childlike fantasies are punctuated with anxieties common in adulthood. Nothing is completely black or white. You can’t have the sweet without the bitter. These works reveal my deepest fears and are a way for me to fight back against constraints, as well as seek power, independence, creativity, spirituality, and magic.”

Handle With Care features 13 new paintings, rendered in acrylic on paper, and marks her third solo at CHG, following Relazioni Pericolose (November 2019) and Hide and Seek (August 2017).

About Nicoletta Ceccoli:

Nicoletta Ceccoli lives and works in The Republic of San Marino. She studied animatio cinema at the Academy of Fine Arts in Urbino, prior to a successful career as a children’s book illustrator. Commissioned for more than 30 children’s books, Ceccoli has also worked on animated films, advertisements, magazines, album covers, and more for such high-profile clients as Random House, Mondadori, Simon and Shuster, Feltrinelli, Macy’s, United Airlines, and Vogue, among many others.

Ceccoli has exhibited her richly detailed and dreamlike paintings around the world, including in Italy, UK, Netherlands, Tokyo, Russia, Canada, and all over the U.S. In 2021, she was awarded the Andersen Prize, “honoring her as the best children’s book illustrator in Italy.”

Other accolades include being recognized by the Society of Illustrators of New York, as well as being a five time-winner of Communication Arts’ Award of Excellence, one of the most-coveted awards in the industry. In 2022, Ceccoli was chosen to represent The Republic of San Marino at the 59^th Venice Biennale ─ the prestigious international contemporary art exhibition hosted in Venice, Italy and often described as “the Olympics of the art world.”

About Corey Helford Gallery

Established in 2006 by Jan Corey Helford and her husband, television producer/creator Bruce Helford (The Conners, Anger Management, The Drew Carey Show, and George Lopez), Corey Helford Gallery (CHG) has since evolved into one of the premier galleries of New Contemporary art. Its goal as an institution is to support the growth of artists, from the young and emerging, to the well-known and internationally established.

CHG represents a diverse collection of international artists, primarily influenced by today’s pop culture and collectively encompassing style genres such as New Figurative Art, Pop Surrealism, Neo Pop, Graffiti, and Street Art. Located in downtown Los Angeles (571 S. Anderson St. Los Angeles, CA 90033) in a robust 12,000 square-foot building, CHG presents new exhibitions approximately every six weeks.

The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 12:00 pm – 6:00 pm, with visiting hours being Thursday through Saturday from 12:00 pm – 6:00 pm ─ appointments are only necessary during non-visiting hours. For more info and an upcoming exhibition schedule, visit CoreyHelfordGallery.com and follow on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. For available prints from CHG, visit CHGPrints.com.

Find Handle With Care at Corey Helford Gallery now:

Handle With Care opens Saturday, October 29^th from 7:00 pm – 11:00 pm in Gallery 3, alongside a solo show from Brandi Milne, titled Everything I Ever Was, in the Main Gallery.

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