January 30, 2025
CONTEMPORARY ARTIST MARIEL CAPANNA’S WORKS FEATURED IN A YEAR-LONG INSTALLATION
AT THE CLARK ART INSTITUTE
Mariel Capanna: Giornata opens on February 15, 2025
(Williamstown, Massachusetts)—The Clark Art Institute continues its art in public spaces program in 2025 with a year-long installation presenting the work of artist Mariel Capanna (b. 1988, Philadelphia, where she lives and works). Mariel Capanna: Giornata is a free exhibition on view in the Clark Center’s lower level and in the reading room of the Manton Research Center from February 15, 2025 through January 25, 2026.
“We are particularly excited to present this new installation by Mariel Capanna,” said Olivier Meslay, Hardymon Director of the Clark. “Witnessing her create her fresco for the Clark has been a joyful demonstration of Mariel’s artistry, creativity, and exceptional technique.”
In her oil paintings, Capanna plays what she calls “games of remembering” as a way of reckoning with loss. Working from home videos and family slideshows, whose runtime is her constraint, the artist races to record fleeting memory images in oil paint. She scatters these flat, pastel forms like confetti across deep, atmospheric surfaces, creating compositions that are at once jubilant and wistful.
“Mariel’s paintings in oil and in fresco—an unusual medium for a contemporary artist—depend on time constraints, whether the time-based media she paints from or the quick drying plaster of the fresco medium,” said Robert Wiesenberger, curator of contemporary projects. “Her low-contrast compositions also appear to shift color over time, depending on different qualities of light, making them dynamic additions to the Clark’s public spaces.”
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Giornata marks the artist’s first museum solo exhibition. For the Clark, the Philadelphia-based artist presents two new, site-responsive oil paintings as well as a monumental fresco on a wall set into a niche in the Manton Reading Room. The fresco and the oil paintings presented in the Clark’s spaces suggest the artist’s interest in the passage, perception, and limitations of time.
The oil paintings, on view in the Clark Center’s lower level, might appear blank from a distance, but reveal a frenzy of marks up close. Capanna prepares her canvases with layers of atmospheric color then paints quickly from home videos and family slideshows without hitting pause. While her low contrast linework appears faint from the front, it is more visible from the side: Capanna mixes wax and marble dust into her oil paint so that the materials project off the surface and reflect light. Memory, the artist believes, “can always be viewed at different distances and with shifting qualities of attention.” The titles of the two works name some of the objects pictured in them: Tulip, Faucet, Candles, Cat and Goose, Fruit, Awning, Arm (both 2024).
On view in the Manton Research Center’s reading room is her fresco, created on-site at the Clark, titled Wall Painting with Child. The scene, zoomed in to the point of abstraction, unfolds across three sides of a portable fresco wall created for the installation. Capanna practices buon fresco, or “true fresco,” a traditional technique in which pigments are applied to and fuse with the wet plaster of a wall (the word fresco means “fresh”). The fresco process is also defined by time constraints: since the Italian Renaissance, the term giornata has referred to the area of wet plaster that can be painted in a single day.
Contrasting the works on view at the Clark, Capanna explains: “While the oil paintings are color fields from a distance whose scattered parts become legible up close, the fresco is a cropped but legible scene from a distance that becomes a series of color fields up close.”
This year-long installation, free and open to the public, is organized by the Clark Art Institute and curated by Robert Wiesenberger, curator of contemporary projects.
Generous support for Mariel Capanna: Giornata is provided by Margaret and Richard Kronenberg.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Mariel Capanna is currently visiting assistant professor of art at Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. From 2021–23, she was the Mellon Post-MFA Fellow in Studio Art at Williams College. Capanna has served as fresco instructor at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She received a BFA and Certificate of Fine Art from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and an MFA from Yale University.
RELATED EVENTS
Opening Lecture
Saturday, February 15, 2 pm
Auditorium, Manton Research Center
Artist Mariel Capanna introduces her installation, Giornata, which will be on view at the Clark for a year. Capanna’s paintings collage found objects and abstract marks from films, documentaries, slideshows, and home videos to create perceptual fields of distance and memory.
Free. For accessibility questions, call 413 458 0524.
Taste of the Giornata: Exploring Light, Texture, and Transformation in Mariel Capanna’s Paintings
Saturday, May 17, 8 am
Clark Center lower level
Experience Mariel Capanna’s dynamic oil paintings in a new light. Capanna’s large-scale, low-contrast compositions transform with the shifting morning light, unveiling intricate textures of marble dust, wax, and impasto. Savor this unique viewing experience with special coffee and bagels from the Goodrich Coffee Bar at Williams College.
Free. For accessibility questions, call 413 458 0524.
ABOUT THE CLARK
The Clark Art Institute, located in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, is one of a small number of institutions globally that is both an art museum and a center for research, critical discussion, and higher education in the visual arts. Opened in 1955, the Clark houses exceptional European and American paintings and sculpture, extensive collections of master prints and drawings, English silver, and early photography. Acting as convener through its Research and Academic Program, the Clark gathers an international community of scholars to participate in a lively program of conferences, colloquia, and workshops on topics of vital importance to the visual arts. The Clark library, consisting of nearly 300,000 volumes, is one of the nation’s premier art history libraries. The Clark also houses and co-sponsors the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art.
The Clark, which has a three-star rating in the Michelin Green Guide, is located at 225 South Street in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Its 140-acre campus includes miles of hiking and walking trails through woodlands and meadows, providing an exceptional experience of art in nature. Galleries are open 10 am to 5 pm, Tuesday through Sunday from September through June, and daily in July and August. Admission is free to all from January through March and is $20 from April through December; admission is free year-round for Clark members, all visitors age 21 and under, and students with a valid student ID. Free admission is also available through several programs, including First Sundays Free; a local library pass program; and the EBT Card to Culture. For information on these programs and more, visit clarkart.edu or call 413 458 2303.
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