Two pictorial cycles on view: Ritratti and NOw/here
Gian Maria Tosatti presents two pictorial cycles at Pirelli HangarBicocca. Ritratti (2020) is realized with 4 big paintings onto a number of media which remind the advertising posters: iron panels assembled and installed on pipe structures. The artworks, spread along the Shed space, play with the light filtered by the windows creating a mirror effect. Gold and rust, opposing elements here symbolically juxtaposed, remind the man’s critical conditions. “Portraits of communities, of moments and a collective idea”, the artist says about the corruption of consumerism and, at the same time, the fascination it exerts on society and its relationships. Oxidation and corrosion introduce the element of time which is exhibited in its material dimension, chemical-physical. The choice of gold evokes the Western pictorial tradition: from the Byzantine mosaics to the ‘200 and ‘300 panels and then to the Kounellis and De Dominicis experiments: a remarkable element in Tosatti’s language, that was already used as a covering for entire rooms in Sette Stagioni dello Spirito (2013-2016) and in Histoire et Destin – New Men’s Land (2016), as paint on rocks and remains of fortifications.
THE WORKS ALONG THE SPACE OF SHED PLAY WITH THE LIGHT FILTERED BY THE WINDOWS
The NOw/here series, the other section, gives the title to the exhibition curated by Vicente Todolí. The words now and here, or nowhere, focus on the story as a feeling, beyond a temporal sequence. Ten large graphite and charcoal canvas, suspended from the ceiling. Shaded scenarios dotted with small white spheres still bring the role of light, the artist’s main topic that represented Italy at La Biennale di Venezia with the installation Storia della Notte e Destino delle Comete, where we still meet the man-nature relationship theme.
OXIDATION AND CORROSION OF METAL INTRODUCE THE ELEMENT OF TIME
The exhibition path, realized with Pasquale Mari light designer and director of photography, interacts with the structure that was a factory converted into a cultural institution and integrates it with the intimate dimension of the experience. Tosatti, similar to the world of theatrical research and experimental direction, draws on the language of visual arts, architecture and performance and he triggers an intimate journey, with the decontextualization of places and objects to go into the short circuits of contemporaneity.
