This is the third solo exhibition of artist Ambra Durante (born in 2000) at Galerie Friese. Its title, rendered in the artist’s own spelling, is: On death and dreaming.

Ambra Durante draws on any material she can find – canvas, cardboard, shopping bags, shooting cards. She has developed her own visual storytelling language, combining text and image into narrative forms. Her new works are each accompanied by an additional sheet of text, reflecting her closeness to literature, music, and everyday language – like fragments of an internal dialogue.

Taking the personal and the inner self as the starting point of her artistic process, her works speak – of themselves and of us. The realism of the psyche is a realism shared by many, by all of us. We follow the lines and words. We move through the images with our eyes and see ourselves reflected back – in these stories of death and dreaming, of the spaces in between life.

Ambra Durante has lived in Berlin since 2007. In 2020, she published Black box blues with Wallstein Verlag, a graphic novel about mourning life – and how it can be continued.

Lack of sleep is my eye shadow at Galerie Friese in 2021 was Ambra Durante’s first ever exhibition. Most recently, her works were shown in the group exhibitions Kulikunst. Biennale der zeichnungen at Neues Museum Nürnberg and Frösche feuer finisternis, aktuelle zeichnerische Positionen zu jan luyken at Kunstforum Ingelheim.