Mazzoleni
28th March – 30th March, 2024
Booth 3E09
Art Basel Hong Kong
Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre
For Art Basel Hong Kong 2024, Mazzoleni presents a group project that highlights the salient paths of 20th Century Italian Art, drawing parallels and distinctions between the century’s protagonists, whilst intertwining key points of contact from the international art scene. The presentation features works by Agostino Bonalumi, Lucio Fontana, Salvo, Victor Vasarely and Gianfranco Zappettini.
Highlights include Concetto spaziale (1968) by Lucio Fontana, a work characterised by constellations of ‘holes’ pierced into the surface of the canvas. Precisely engraved, in an elegant rhythm and contained within an oval shape, the ‘holes’ have a purely ‘spatial’ origin, acting as portals to an expanse of further space. This ovoid shape is a recurring motif in Fontana’s work, with the symbolic form of the oval, or egg, fascinating the artist with the myriad of connotations it contained – biological, spiritual and primordial – offering him such limitless inspiration that it became the basis for one of his most famous series of works, Fine di Dio.
Following the success of Mazzoleni’s exhibition Agostino Bonalumi. A Theatre of Forces, a major retrospective of Bonalumi’s work marking the 10th anniversary of his death, a selection of his signature ‘extroflexions’ are exhibited. Each work by Bonalumi is born out of a dialogue of internal pressures and external resistance with which the surface of the canvas opposes. Rosso (1974) is of no exception, with the parallel wooden ribs of the work extending the canvas into a three-dimensional space. This extension converges with its monochromatic nature, casting variable shadows, causing changes in colour intensity on the works surface.
A selection of Salvo’s richly coloured, otherworldly landscapes are on display, including the mountainous landscape Chiaro di Luna (2007) from the “Notturni” (Nightscape) series. This series of paintings is characterised by dark backgrounds and bold, contrasting colours, featuring night-time scenes. Chiaro di Luna presents a snowy sanctuary, that is both calming and mysterious, transporting the viewer into Salvo’s dreamlike, suspended world.
Continuing the dialogue between Italian post-war artists, a selection of paintings from both the late 1960s and 21st Century by Gianfranco Zappettini are exhibited.
Like in the work of Fontana and Bonalumi, Zappettini’s work from the late 1960s and 1970s was predominantly monochromatic, a distinguishing feature of the Pittura Analitica movement. Unlike his contemporaries, Zappettini often uses alternative materials in his paintings, transforming the medium into an illusionistic composition. The exhibited Strutture in BX 2 (1967), created with acrylic and semi-transparent plastic on canvas demonstrates this exploration between colour and geometry. In Zappettini’s more recent series of work Con-Centro, gold dominates the composition, which the artist notes as alluding to “meanings of a metaphysical order and which, expanding across the whole surface, communicate ancient splendours” (Gianfranco Zappettini, Gianfranco Zappettini: The Golden Age, 2020. p.12).
Other highlights in the presentation include Victor Vasarely’s Einstein-Ker (1976), one of four paintings produced taking the name of Einstein. Within this work the centre is marked by a large circular shape potentially referring to the term “ker”, or “circus” in Hungarian, which then features a grid formation, curved at the corners. The space around the disc is divided into four patterned sections whose perspective drops towards the centre of the painting, generating additional deformations, creating great spatial complexity.
Mazzoleni is at Booth 3E09 at Art Basel Hong Kong from the 28th of March until the 30th of March, 2024
©2024 Mazzoleni
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