RaccontALDO MONDINO
from 27 September 2008 to 28 November 2008
Brescia
Piazza Vittorio, 1972
acrilico su tela e palloncino
120 × 120 cm
Colossi Contemporary Art Gallery is kicking off the autumn season… with a double bill.
There will in fact be two major solo exhibitions, staged respectively at the gallery’s first venue, at number 13 Corsia del Gambero, and at the second, recently acquired, opposite at number 12. Two major exhibitions, dedicated to two leading figures in contemporary art: Aldo Mondino and Francesco De Molfetta.
“RaccontAldo Mondino” is the title of the exhibition dedicated to one of the most complex and eclectic figures in contemporary art from the 1960s to the 1990s, a tireless experimenter with artistic languages and a non-conformist exponent of both an all-Italian Pop Art and a Dada-Surrealist revival reinterpreted in the light of conceptual art.
“Francesco De Molfetta: Fiato sprecato” is the title of the exhibition dedicated to the young artist whom the Colossi Contemporary Art Gallery has been following for over three years now: already established on the international scene, his work has, with refined irony, managed to revisit and subvert many of the ‘unresolved issues’ of 20th-century contemporary art, starting precisely with the Dada and Surrealist movements on which Mondino himself was trained.
Cherished, explored, promoted and meticulously presented by the gallery during various exhibition events, the works of the two artists have repeatedly “spoken to one another”, thanks to their shared points of contact, linguistic play and conceptual links, which are rediscovered each time in ever greater numbers and with increasingly subtle interweaving.
The exhibitions are curated by Alberto Fiz and Marina Mojana, art critics renowned internationally for their ability to follow with attention and depth both the periods and movements of art that have already been historicised, and young and emerging artists, devising exhibition and thematic itineraries of great charm and relevance.
A comparison of two generations, but not only that: through these exhibitions—two veritable anthologies born of the usual, meticulous selection of works that characterises the aesthetic taste of Daniele and Antonella Colossi—the Gallery aims to compare the expressive explorations of the two artists.
There are several common themes:
irony, understood as allusion, quotation and displacement; as disguise, duplicated words and forms, an interweaving of opposing intentions.
the experimentation with different materials: from foodstuffs, such as sugar and butter, to industrial materials, chipboard and concrete; the introduction of everyday objects, from lighters to ballpoint pens, used to create works that completely subvert their intended purpose, right up to the series of works on taxidermy by Francesco De Molfetta;
reflection on art history, linguistic analysis of the major figures and artistic movements of the twentieth century, reworked and recounted in works that reactivate their meanings and analyse their current relevance;
work on language, the analysis of the word, the relationship between medium and message, sign, signifier and signified, and research into linguistic short-circuiting;
analysis of the role of the viewer, called upon not only to experience the work but also to complete its meaning, to imbue it with significance, and to respond to its provocations;
the narrative aspect of the artwork, the desire to tell a story, the value of theatrical ‘mise en scène’ and the final twist
The exhibition “RaccontAldo Mondino” ranges from the “Opere a Quadretti” series to Aldo Mondino’s “Cadute” and “Bilance”, lucid analyses of Constructivist artistic poetics, created between the 1960s and 1970s; to the works featuring balloons and splashes of colour, from “Piazza Vittorio” to the “Può” series that Mondino created in the late 1960s and early 1970s; to the series of works that play with materials, from those using sugar, such as “It is sweeter to give than to receive” and “Candite (Homage to De Chirico)”, right through to the “Tappeti” in Heraclitus, which also serve as an overture to the Turin-born artist’s works dedicated to the East.
The exhibition “Fiato sprecato”, dedicated to Francesco De Molfetta, aims instead to narrate, through a careful selection of works, the ironic and caustic world of the young artist: a world formed by veritable art puzzles that explore the theme of language and its infinite potential: from the series dedicated to art and its protagonists, from the “fake” Boetti to the young Milanese artist’s “Fontina di Fontana”, where the artist demonstrates that he has personally reworked, with subtle critical irony, the value of tradition and the weight of the twentieth-century legacy on younger generations, to the new experimental series on “Taxidermy”, where the use of various animals unsettles and provokes the viewer by playing with terms and languages: a powerful conceptual project, executed with refined technique, designed to analyse the subtle links between nature and machine, freedom and artifice; not to be missed, too, are the works “restricted to those aged 18 and over”, delightful pieces that are both subtly erotic and ironic.
All works of a high technical standard, of considerable artistic and historical importance; works which, thanks to the two exhibition layouts, designed specifically for the two artists, will be free to meet, merge and stand out, mirroring one another with that freedom which is the essential condition of irony. “Irony, that is to say, independence, and art needs this divine state to weave its whims”; so wrote Ardengo Soffici in The First Principles of a Futurist Aesthetic: it was the early 20th century.
A twentieth century which, today, through these two exhibitions, is once again narrated – and transcended – by the work and language of two artists in dialogue who, whilst wielding a common weapon, irony, have been able to strike in distinct ways, guerrilla fighters by chance – and eternal adolescents by necessity – through the jungle of things and words that we ourselves traverse every day.
Piazza Vittorio, 1972
acrilico su tela e palloncino
120 × 120 cm
PUÒ, 1968
tecnica mista su carta intelata
54 × 44 cm
Opere correlate
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