Art - An Accumulation of Mistakes

Featuring Elena Ceretti Stein Words by Nastasia Khmelnitski

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‘Art - An Accumulation of Mistakes’ is a collaboration between WÜL - Elena Ceretti Stein, an Italian-Israeli visual artist - and Belle & Sue, the local fashion store. Elena is a multi-disciplinary artist with a philosophical approach to existence

as a creator. She was born in Milan, moved to London where she graduated from the University of the Arts, eventually moving again, this time to Tel-Aviv to enable yet another step in self-development and self-realization.

We decided to visit Elena in her art studio in South Tel-Aviv, Kiryat HaMelacha neighborhood, the hive of contemporary, emerging young artists and speak about inspiration, the empty spaces, and the symphony of creation. 2 days we’ve been filming the studio and the surrounding area, speaking with Elena about her art, watching her paint, reorganizing the studio, and dismantling the remains of the irrelevant plaster sculpture. The prime theme of Elena’s works is finding beauty, revealing the truth and the world through her individual perspective, the Alien Perspective. Elena discloses that art is a story about the empty spaces, the holes, while for the creator  

Created by WÜL Collective Stasia Khmelnitski Dmitry Khmelnitsky Ilya Marcus Ksenya Filkov

Featuring Elena Ceretti Stein

Director Dmitry Khmelnitsky Director of Photography Ilya Marcus Style Ksenya Filkov Music Anton Khalemsky Editor: Dmitry Khmelnitsky Producer: Ilya Marcus Color by: Blacklight Rental: Broadcast Media

Clothes

BELLE&SUE

‘It's not about fixing your holes. It's about making them beautiful.’

Sculptures and installations as a part of Elena’s work create a reality in which the symbolic elements, the feared and the desired, merge to disturbing and strangely attractive objects.

Unnerving and vibrant color schemes signify a viable and animated state of existence. Elena ponders on her creation bringing in additional deep layers of thorough thoughts and complicated reflection in a constant attempt to disclose something beyond the rules of nature. The result often emerges as poetic plasticity which comprises a combination of soft textures and shapes blended with industrial materials.

‘I want to cheat death in my own way. Looking for light in the most unexpected places. Chasing the sky suddenly showing through the cracks of a soul. Exposing the fragility, the naked knots.’

“Finding your lies isn’t easy. To make good art, you have to learn not to lie to yourself, and that’s the f*cking hardest thing you can do. What matters the most in paintings, but it’s not only about paintings, it’s about art in general, and this means also music, poetry, or film, it’s the things you don't say, the things you decide not to paint, the things you decide to leave out, and the things you decide to say instead. That subtle line between what is shown and what is not that’s what makes good art and that’s the hardest line to draw. That’s something I’m playing with a lot, trying to look at the empty spaces, the spaces that are not filled with anything. Trying to look at the other side, the negative. I’m trying to paint like that, looking at it reversed, trying to see the empty spaces as the actual protagonist of the painting, making a symphony of pauses and empty notes and spaces between words rather than words.”

‘You need to be extremely honest, and this is the thing that’s worth way more than inspiration for an artist. Find honesty, find the truth even if it hurts, even if it is something that is hard to confront or face. Try to find a way to say it. Try to find a visual answer to questions.’

I’m trying to paint plants as if they were hands, and people as if they were plants. I’m trying to paint fabric as if it was skin and skin as if it was fabric. I try to mix everything and let objects and textures become each other. There is something true, something beyond this chit chat and noise and I want to get to that. I know it’s a very preposterous thing to do but that’s the only thing I can do, everything else is noise and to be honest doesn’t seem to be worth living for.”

‘I’m not interested in things that are simply pretty. Although this is not trying to say that there is no such a thing as objective beauty or harmony in the world, on the contrary, I use very vibrant colors to create my composition in a harmonic way. I’m not trying to deconstruct that, I’m trying to get beyond that.’