Taking No Sides by Side / Italo Zuffi
Opening Reception: Saturday, Saturday May 12, 6 – 8 pm
Italo Zuffi (Italy, 1969) presents a new body of work dealing with feelings of ambivalence and mental hierarchy. He has conceived an exhibition for Newman Popiashvili Gallery which offers different layers of meaning and interpretation, and where the sets of works displayed can be experienced also separately, not necessarily in relation one to the other.
La replica (various carved stones, 2007) meticulously recreates some building blocks, arranged on the floor. Each group of objects is a one to one, exact reproduction of the original bricks – a reference to architecture and its basic components, as well as an absurdist task to manually replicate industrially made materials. In fact, it is the presence of a small toy-brick, also carved in stone, and placed atop one of the ‘real’ bricks, which carries further meaning to this work – it evokes the often destructive attitude typical of children, in contrast with the more conscious and stable awareness of adulthood. The concepts of construction and destruction are then here, subtly, singled out as the two primary activities between which human nature is constantly oscillating.
L’esperto risponde (b/w prints, 2007) is a diptych portraying a man performing a sort of choreography while carrying a cassette-player, on a pile of debris from a demolished house. The scene is seen from a distance, as well as in close-up, through the use of photography as a detached registration of the event, rather than an attempt to decipher it.
The last set of works, titled A Master’s Span (glazed and spray-painted terracotta, 2007), is a group of geometrical ceramics with text. The lines modelled on the surface of these works are, in fact, a combination of names of artists that Italo Zuffi had been looking at – mostly as part of his artistic training – either through careful study or more casual observation. Combined in such a way as to make it hard to discern where the domain of one artist ends and the second one begins, these names are a statement about the inability of clearly establishing the boundaries of memory and knowledge, as well as their range of action and influence.
Italo Zuffi has been shown extensively throughout Europe. This exhibition follows the one entitled Shaking doors, held at our gallery in 2003. His recent solo exhibitions were at FPAC, Palermo; Museo dell’Arredo Contemporaneo, Russi in Italy; CRAC Alsace, Altkirch, in France; Volume!, Rome; and Galleria Continua, San Gimignano, among others. His work has been included in group shows at Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Milan; Musée d’Art Moderne de Saint-Etienne; Coleman Project Space, London; W139, Amsterdam; Galeria Arsenal, Bialystok; Palazzo Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Guarene d’Alba, and De Appel, Amsterdam.
Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday 11am – 6pm.
For further information, please contact the gallery.