4ME4YOU visits Pipeline Gallery to experience “The Hour of the Star,” an exhibition by Lize Bartelli.
MY PROCESS
For this body of work, Bartelli turns toward the novel The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector, a story that has stayed with her for years. The paintings are not illustrations of the book. Instead, they gently echo its spirit. They reflect on themes like invisibility, longing, and the quiet ways we perform ourselves in the world.
Her paintings explore the delicate space between what is real and what is constructed. From imagined icons to the faces we follow today, she looks at how identity slowly shifts into performance. The work does not try to solve this tension. It simply holds it, allowing viewers to sit with it.
Red lipstick appears as a quiet but powerful symbol. With a single gesture, it can contain history, desire, beauty, and rebellion. Bartelli is drawn to this simplicity, the depth hidden in an everyday act. For her, colour is a language: instinctive, physical, and direct.
Throughout the exhibition, small details, like the image of a telephone, hint at the longing to be seen and heard, while also wishing to remain hidden. Nothing is accidental. Scale, cropping, and colour are carefully chosen. Yet the meaning stays open.
Rather than offering answers, “The Hour of the Star” invites a moment of recognition, a soft reflection on how we shape ourselves, and how the world shapes us in return.
