Elisa Bertaglia: The Rest
Opening Reception November 7, 6-8 PM
Exhibition: Nov 7 - Dec 6, 2025
SARAHCROWN is pleased to announce The Rest, Elisa Bertaglia’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. This new body of work is inspired by the idea of rest not as absence, but as an active practice of regeneration, and continues Bertaglia’s ongoing exploration of thresholds.
In this new series of paintings and drawings, rest becomes presence — a conscious state where stillness and the suspension of time open space for creativity, offering the energy needed for renewal. As in her earlier series Hic Sunt Dracones and The Dance, the investigation of thresholds (both physical and spiritual) remains central but here, it is expanded: threshold and suspension of time converge to frame rest as a transformative condition. In this state, stillness becomes a fertile ground. Pause holds possibility, and quiet reveals its own depth of vision.
Prompted by a personal period of forced rest and reflection, Bertaglia investigates the threshold of consciousness itself: the moment in which stillness and transformation coincide and when something enters awareness. At the center of the exhibition — and marking a new direction in her practice — are three mid-sized canvases that introduce the figure of the bird. Traditionally, birds symbolize spirituality, the soul, and positive transformation — from renewal and new beginnings to resurrection. All themes that inspired Bertaglia to create this new series of works. Depicted in varying degrees of abstraction, the birds emerge from magmatic backgrounds of dense foliage and imagined fauna. They occupy an atmosphere that is both mysterious and charged. The new palette of deep greens, reds, and purples intensifies this sense of a liminal, unplaceable space — a world hovering on the edge of a threshold.
The exhibition also presents three new emblematic works on gold along paintings without animal elements, highlighting the variety of Bertaglia’s approaches. Leaves Are Growing From My Body (2025), for example, a dense carpet of flowers painted over a rose-gold plate, opens onto a precious, almost baroque dimension: here nature becomes ornament, an overflowing vitality that alludes to a corporeality in constant metamorphosis.
What makes Bertaglia’s new work so compelling is its ability to translate profound concepts into imagery that feels immediate and luminous. With these works, she addresses complex themes through images of striking beauty and deceptive simplicity.
With The Rest, Bertaglia offers not an escape from life’s struggles but a reorientation — an invitation to inhabit time differently, to enter the spaces where stillness and renewal meet.
The opening reception will be held on November 7, 6-8 PM. The exhibition will run until December 6, with an artist walkthrough on November 15, 2-4. For more information please contact info@sarahcrown.com.
Elisa Bertaglia (b. 1983, Rovigo, Italy) earned her MFA in Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts, Venice in 2009 and her BFA in Painting from the same institution in 2006. She attended multiple artist residencies including Residency Unlimited, Brooklyn (2023); Officine Saffi, Milan (2017); ESKFF at MANA Contemporary, Jersey City (2016); Atipografia, Arzignano (2016); Casa Falconieri, Serdiana (2015); and Dolomiti Contemporanee, Borca di Cadore (2013, 2014).
Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at SARAHCROWN, New York; Martina Corbetta Gallery, Giussano; Galerie MZ, Augsburg; Weber & Weber Gallery, Turin; Palazzo Madama, Turin; and Officine dell’Immagine, Milan, among others. Selected group exhibitions include the Guggenheim Museum, Venice; Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Saitama, Japan; Borges Cultural Center, Buenos Aires; Bronx Museum Gala, New York; CAF Museum of Modern Art, Saitama; Villa Reale, Monza; Atipografia, Arzignano; and numerous international art fairs including Kiaf Seoul, Miart Milan, and Untitled Art Fair, Miami Beach.
Bertaglia’s work is held in public and private collections including The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York; Eileen S. Kaminsky Family Foundation, Jersey City; Museum of Contemporary Art, Penne; City Archives of Milan; Banca Sistema, Padua; Museo del Parque Foundation, El Milagro, Argentina; and the Cominelli Foundation, Italy.
She has received recognition from institutions such as the Arte Laguna Prize (2021), Exibart Prize (2021), Arteam Prize (2015, 2016, 2017), Pattern Award (2014), and Combat Prize (2013).
Bertaglia currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, and has been represented by SARAHCROWN since 2016.