Marco Gastini "Corrispondenze e Riflessi"
Venue: Via della Mercede 12/a Rome, main stairway, 3rd floor
Duration: From the 29th of September to the 11th of November 2005
Opening hours: Monday to Friday 10:00 - 13:00, 16:30 - 19:30
Marco Gastini (Turin, 1938) presents for the first time in Rome, at the Galleria dell’Oca, after the great retrospective which was held at the Promotrice in Turin in 2001, a selection of artworks that goes from the Untitled, 1969 to the latest works of 2005.
Gastini always turns his attention to the space, his artworks seem to be launched outwardly to create a closed dialogue, consisting of rebounds, correspondences and reflections. It’s a system of balances among “things” kept in suspense: “thoughts, actions or signs that are going to move as they were suspended, waiting for something...”, things that constantly escape, that are never static. The heaviness of iron and the thickness of colour contrast with the play of lights and planes which is created among and within the works. Every element, whether of sign or material tends to move into other spaces, their work and their energies continue into the space around, vital and defining.
At the moment when he comes into contact with the work, the spectator becomes an actor too, creating that same harmonic tension that we usually find in the theatre. It is a direct impact between two lives: the work immediately loses some of its secrecy, giving something in return.
This field of energy develops during the extreme creative action of the artist: “The vitality is clotted as if to designate the energy which depicts the signs that take to flight and tend over the whole work and beyond it” (Marco Gastini).
Marco Gastini has shaped once more the space of this gallery, as we can see looking at the artwork Untitled, 1969, consisting of fusions of lead and antimony pressed upon the wall. The same work was exhibited for the first time in 1970 at the Salone dell’Annunciata in Milan, and it shapes the space in different ways always to exhibit the nature of the place.
As if on rebound we are led into another room, this time in front of another work, Due of 1972 on plexiglas. It’s a spot, a sort of scratched cloud suspended in the room. Then we come to the work titled Disegno (Drawing): a tracing of points that follow different orthogonal grids where somekind of instability creates the space.
These artworks are essential in their nature joining the sign and the material into a dialogue with the space between.
In the following decade Marco Gastini privileges the painting joining the classic canvas with many different materials such as reinforcing iron rod, glass, plaster and stones. The artworks that belong to this period haven’t lost their sculptural essence. As we can see in Canto nel blu 1996, the colour spreads out crossing the limits recolling to mind more recent works of the artist which are related to natural elements as air, water, fire and land (Apeiron 2, Oltre l’eco 2003-2005). Everything is created from a centripetal and centrifugal force at the same time; the ultramarine blu spreads over, levitates beyond the material to creative action.
Works in the Exhibition
ROOM 1
1- Riflesso nel segno (Reflexion in the Sign), 2004/05 - Mixed media, iron and glass on canvas; 200 x 205 cm
2- Oltre l’eco (Beyond the Echo), 2003-2005 - Mixed media, iron and glass on canvas; 203 x 200 cm
3- Senza titolo (Untitled), 2001 - Mixed media glass and canvas on wall; 39 x 49 cm
ROOM 2
4- 18 x 18, 1973 - durcot and acrylics on plexiglas; 106 x 106 cm
5- Due (Two), 1972 - Scratched plexiglas; 149 x 149 cm
6 - Senza titolo Z (Untitled Z), 1975 - drawing on paper; 100 x 70 cm
7- Disegno (Drawing), 1972 - cement powder, black pigment on wall, oil pastel on plexiglas
ROOM 3
8- Senza titolo (Untitled), 1969 - fusions of lead and antimony on wall; 360 x 70 x 70
9- AYQ , 1975 - acrylics and pastel on canvas; 240 x 165 cm
10- Paesaggio (Landscape), 1977 - acrylics, pastel and pearl white on canvas; 252 x 317 cm
ROOM 4
11- Apeiron 2, 2005 - mixed media; 208 x 200 cm
12- Il canto del blu (Singing in the Blue), 1996 - mixed media and chalk on canvas; 154 x 97 cm
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