Isabella’s paintings emerge from a profound fascination with existence itself—the simple yet awe-inspiring fact that anything exists at all. Through mark-making, she engages with this wonder, translating the intangible experience of being into tangible forms. Each mark becomes a primal assertion of presence, a trace of life within a world shaped by impermanence.
In an era dominated by digitalization and automation, painting offers a tactile defiance against the fragmented realities of virtual spaces. While algorithms and screens mediate our perceptions, the act of painting grounds me in a physical and immediate process. Her gestures embrace the interplay between fragmentation and wholeness, exploring how the disruptions of digital culture coexist with the embodied continuity of the handmade.
Black occupies a central role in Amram’s work, serving as both a compositional and symbolic element. It evokes the paradox of something within nothingness and nothingness within something, reflecting a duality that resonates throughout my practice. Drawing on phenomenology and existentialism, she explores these tensions philosophically, grounding her work in ideas such as Martin Heidegger’s reflections on being and non-being and Jean-Paul Sartre’s “emptiness at the heart of being.” Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological focus on perception and embodiment further informs the artist’s approach, where each gesture is a record of lived experience.
Visually, Amram’s paintings balance chaos and order, fragmentation and cohesion, through dynamic rhythms of gestural strokes and linear interruptions. Vibrant colors interact with grounding blacks, creating spaces that suggest both detachment and potential transformation. These void-like areas invite viewers to contemplate presence and absence, offering a meditation on existence in a fractured, mediated world.
Ultimately, her work affirms the wonder of being while embracing the paradoxes of fragmentation, exploring the interplay of presence, absence, and the void through the embodied, playful act of painting.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS AND AUCTIONS:
Chelsea College of Arts Graduate Diploma degree show 4, London, UK (June 2024)
Art on a Postcard International Women's Day Auction, The Bomb Factory, London, UK (March 2024)
Chelsea College of Arts Graduate Diploma degree show, The Triangle, London, UK (January 2024)
Art on a Postcard Winter Auction, Gathering Gallery, London, UK (November 2023)
'ONE Akaretler' group show, Bilgili Holding and Shopigo Art, Akaretler, Istanbul, Turkey (September 2023)
Intuition Goes Before You' group show curated by Vittoria Beltrame, 13 Soho Square, London, UK (August 2023)