Claudio Parmiggiani "Pinxit et celavit"
Venue: Via della Mercede 12/a Rome, main stairway, 3rd floor
Duration: 17th March to 18th May 2005
Open hours: Monday to Friday 10:00 - 13:00, 16:30 - 19:30
Publication: "Parmiggiani", Gli Ori, Prato, 2005
The exhibition
The first exhibition in Rome of Claudio Parmiggiani was held in 1975 at the Galleria La Tartaruga of Plinio de Martiis, the most recent one was held in 1983 at the Galleria of Mario Diacono. Now, after more than twenty years, Claudio Parmiggiani presents in Rome 10 artworks, at the Galleria dell’Oca in via della Mercede 12/a, from the 17th of March till the 18th of May.
The exhibition includes works dated from the 1970 up to today: from the very first delocazioni to more recent works realized for the gallery space.
Claudio Parmiggiani (1943) is one of the most significant and secret italian artist. In one interview with Valentina Castellani (Torino 1998) in which she asked what position he would have in comparison with the “Arte Povera” and the Conceptual Art, to which he is often more likely to be placed, Claudio Parmiggiani answered “I have never thought that artists needs to be part of a movement, to find his own accomplishment by the homologation with a group. I don’t even know what does “Arte Povera” or Conceptual Art mean. To be part of a group never adds anything to the loneliness of the one’s thought and, in any case, I think that the most important thing is to belong to one’s self.....we have to bring the art, at least the one’s own art, far from theatrical gestures..., more closer to its solitariness, and to silence...”
“Pinxit et celavit” is the title of this exhibition at the Galleria dell’Oca. The title reasserts the discipline to the silence of the artist and of his works which withdraw from invasive necessicity to be manifest.
In the four rooms of the gallery Claudio Parmiggiani has placed artworks, where things are absent rather than present. This is not only a matter of the delocazioni, that represent the negative of a form, but of all the works in the exhibition: from the plaster casts, which lead to the memory of whole through a fragment, to the work placed as introduction of the exhibition, Untitled, 1977. In this work on the top of a wooden block behind a hammer and an anvil, there is the perfection of a white canvas.
The delocazioni are dated from 1970. The first one, at the Galleria Civica di Modena, was realized from the observation of the space where the only presences (shadows) were the objects that the artists had previously removed (de-located) from the wall: a picture or a ladder. This is an almost alchemic process where the disappearance of the object is obtained from the fire, the smoke, and the smut. The image is brought back as physical form of the shadow. The object is transformed into light and has his plastic presence in the middle of nothing.
In one space of the gallery there is a great work which represents the memory of Giuliano Briganti’s library that was there not too long ago: the smut and the smoke originated by the powerfulness of the fire have filled the gaps of hundred of books with light. In the last room another work shows the shadows of beautiful butterflies, a reminder of Dosso Dossi. They are suspended in the smoke, which lays uniformly on the wood. Fragment of wings are still there, giving evidence of their dissolving.
In the work Pane (Bread), 1998 the spirituality, category of the wholeness and the nothingness appears clearly. 52 pieces of bread, in a corner of the last room are made of cast iron, they are heavy as stones, but seem light as spirits. Perhaps for Parmiggiani there is an evident identity between wholeness and nothingness, stone and spirit.
Biographical Note
Claudio Parmiggiani (Luzzara, Reggio Emilia, 1943), one of best-known italian artists, lives and works in Bologna. He belongs to the same generation of Giulio Paolini and Luciano Fabro, but we cannot relate him to a proper movement, he has been always an outsider, operating on his own.
Claudio Parmiggiani was trained at the Istituto d’Arte di Modena; during this period he met Giorgio Morandi, whose influence was more philosophical than stylistic. His very first solo exhibition was in 1965 at Bologna. During this period he made the first painted plaster casts. In the meantime with the poet Emilio Villa he developed a deep fellowship, and he realized works which aimed to convert the certainties of our world. These works involve the whole space, such as “Luce, luce, luce”, 1968. The floor of a gallery was strewn with yellow pigment. He do not use the traditional techniques, the experimental methods he use and the common objects that are usually part of his installations reveal an obscure side, a secret intimacy. His art take source from the ancient Masters, such as Piero della Francesca and Dosso Dossi, cultural allusions which are transformed into symbols and metaphors.
In 1970 he realized the first “Delocazioni”, which will represent the main theme of all his work, a deep consideration on the wholeness and the nothingness. Parmiggiani realized these works made with fire, smoke, and smut for exhibitions at the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain of Geneva, 1995; at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1997; at the Promotrice delle belle Arti, Turin, 1998; and at the Musée Fabre of Montpellier, 2002. He has been also represented several times at the Venice Biennial in dedicated spaces.
He recently exhibited at the Tel Aviv, Museum of Art, and at the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bologna in 2003.
Works in the exhibition:
First Room
1- Untitled, 1977
2- Untitled, 1982
Second Room
3- Delocazione, 1970
4- Untitled, 2005
5- Untitled, 2004
Third Room
6,7,8,9,10- Untitled, 2005
11-Untitled, 1995
Forth Room
12- Untitled, 2005
13- Pane (Bread), 1998
14- Infinito (Infinity), 1993
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