Artist: Alexis Ralaivao

Image credit: Laurent Grivet

ARTWORK TITLE: La Clef

ARTIST BIO: “With Alexis Ralaivao’s work, we’re greeted with an ethereal light that lends itself to an invitation. It bathes the skin in a glow that beckons to touch. The paintings are dreamlike. The warm tones seamlessly blend together weaving an ode to tenderness. Each piece is a snippet of a larger love story. A necklace rests against a collarbone. Pearls cascade down a pillow. Elsewhere, hands caught as they’re about to peel clementines conjure an image of sensuous intimacy. The colors, soft as silk, render us closer to a stranger we’ve never met, and yet, still feel fondness for. Our gaze is that of the lover, not of the external observer. It is in the crevices of these intimate moments that love resides: in the subtleties of the quotidian.” -Lara Atallah, from “Strained Intimacies” group show press release.

PROJECT QUOTE: This project was a fantastic surprise! I always wanted to do this kind of project, doing it with one of the best Maison de Couture, I couldn’t be happier.

In my body of work you can see that I love painting clothes, specially shoes, moccasin. I’ve been wanting to paint a bag for a long time and this was the perfect opportunity !

Right away I had an idea about how the painting should look like. I was picturing it outside, in the deep countryside, with this woman reaching in her bag as she walks. I wanted the bag kind of stuck, pressed between her arms.

Not sure why I had this scenario in my head but I like the fact that it is full of mystery. You can easily make your own assumptions  about what is happening here.

Where is she, what is she reaching in her bag, where does that path go?

Artist : Louise Giovanelli

Image credit: Michael Pollard, @michaelpollardphotography

ARTWORK TITLE: Dominion

ARTIST BIO: Louise Giovanelli has been drawing attention as a rising young painter for her delicate, luminous works, which inject vitality into historical subjects from the canon of Western art. Through interconnected series, Giovanelli weaves together visual clues surrounding a specific moment or event. Her subject matter is primarily chosen for its formal qualities and includes, staged photographs, film stills, classical sculpture, and architectural elements. Within each series, Giovanelli repeats her motifs and certain paintings appear nearly identical, excepting slight alterations of the composition, or tonality. Deftly manipulating light and form, her multivalent imagery reminds us that the classical foundations of painting remain sources of delight and innovation. Keenly attuned to the historical significance of painting as a medium and system of representation, her paintings challenge the eye by dissolving representation into carefully crafted textures and patterns. For Giovanelli, painting allows for a visual slowing-down, and beholding her works is akin to a meditative process.

PROJECT QUOTE: I approached this project with Valentino in much the same way I do my day-to-day practice. This includes, as one method among many, responding to, re-imagining and re-configuring details of pre-existing art works. My process for ‘Dominion’ was to zoom in, isolate, crop and re-contextualise — elements of the Valentino bag that I found most visually interesting and that I considered to have further painterly potential. I focussed on the sculptural volume of the bag, rotating and formally adjusting the indentation lines, connecting them corner-to-corner — delineating space. The gold stud repeated motif divides and grids the canvas — suggesting something classical, ornamental and fetishistic. The painting is built up in multiple transparent layers of single pigment colours, much like a printing process, arriving at a deep, rich, chromatic black. Filtering the language of digital tools (cropping, rotating, zooming-in) through the analogue process of painting is an attempt to hone in my investigation of the bag, whilst also complicating the legibility of the source image. In this way narratives are suggested and the painting remains ultimately, in a way necessarily, undefined. What I want this painting to relay, and my concern for painting more broadly, is to foreground ways of looking and perceiving, to encourage the possibility that the act of looking itself is content. It was a privilege to be chosen by Valentino for this project and to participate in such a high profile campaign – to explore further and foreground the affect that fashion can have upon painting and vice-versa.

Artist Iori Nagashima

Image credit: Naoto Kobayashi @naotokobayashii

ARTWORK TITLE: 青い雨

ARTIST BIO: Born in Osaka in 1997. Graduated Musashino Art University 2020.

Create a story based on what he sees with his eyes, photos taken by himself, images seen on the Internet.

Creating the artwork is an act of picking up a story.

PROJECT QUOTE: The handbag was the main motif, I wanted to draw it in a sense of reality, and tried to express it naturally in the scene. I wanted to give a story to the drawing like a novel or movie, trying to capture a singular moment.

The color of the handbag is in beautiful ivory, it quite stands out in the dark.

Artist : Nahum Kim

ARTWORK TITLE: Roman Stud Space

ARTIST BIO: Nahum Kim is an artist who is based in Gangneung, South Korea. He mainly uses the iPad to draw pictures and he does his works by mixing various materials such as oil pastel and acrylic. Recently, the artist is working on collage which breaks the boundary of the photo and painting. Until today, he has collaborated with various companies and he is continuously working on individual and group exhibitions.

PROJECT QUOTE: Recently, I’ve been very into nature. I live in Gangneung, Gangwon-do, which is located far from Seoul, and is full of natural elements that inspire me, such as trees, forests, seas, and lakes.

What I particularly like the most about living here is that I can always look at the stars at night. Looking at the stars makes me imagine the mystical universe and its infinite possibilities. In addition, each of those twinkling stars gives a feeling of neatness.

When I first saw the Valentino Garavani Roman Stud Bag, I thought the stud details evoked a variety of emotions as if I was staring at the stars. I wanted to express the mysterious, neat, but fancy stud detail as a star.

Artist: Zhang Zihao

oImage credit: Hogan

ARTWORK TITLE: Untitled, 2021

ARTIST BIO: Zhang Zihao, a Shanghai-based, free-roaming artist

PROJECT QUOTE: Speaking of VALENTINO, I think of the color red, and naturally black comes in as the perfect pairing. The faces, they are people I have actually met before, I gave them each an outfit from my imagination that suits their temperament. As a large part of the painting is monochrome, you can easily sense tranquility and a flow of vitality, in turns bringing out the texture of crochet sneakers – they remind me of a sense of comfort. I give no storyline to my characters, the major part is open to interpretation. The paintings are both personal and public. Vitality is a flow, don’t force it, and the rest will fall into place.