Each of the invited artists in “A Painting Cycle” offers an original take on painting today, from both a technical and a semantic standpoint, representing some of the many aspects of this broad and complex panorama. The exhibition, curated by Cecilia Canziani and Ilaria Gianni, consists of five installments that will be presented sequentially over the course of two and a half months. The first of these, which was on view for the second week in March, featured British artist Jessica Warboys, who merges pictorial gesture and performance in works like the video Stone Throat, 2011, the three-dimensional composition Motion Motif, 2012, and her “Sea Paintings” canvases, 2011, which the artist drenched in colored pigment and then immersed in the sea until the water naturally modified their surface. Similarly, German artist Julia Schmidt’s Basement, 2010, and Ufficio postale [Post Office], 2012, which were presented next, translate scenes of daily life into flat, uniform chromatic planes that recall the look of shadows, all dense with mystery. As with Warboys, Schmidt shows that even in our cyber era, it is possible for a traditional artistic practice to help us investigate our lives—technology is not always necessary. The third installment of this exhibition features Christopher Orr’s imaginary voyage into art history, which is here condensed into five small paintings; each seems like a preparatory sketch, with a private and experimental quality. In Nocturne, 2007, and The Light That Fails, 2010, for example, the figures dissolve into an unfinished state—as if part of an ancient memory. Polish painter Agnieszka Brzezanska mixes abstract and figurative forms, recalling the Surrealist aesthetic, especially that of Max Ernst. Italian artist Luca Bertolo will complete the series in May. Beyond the individual installments, “A Painting Cycle” should be understood as a whole for its clinical rigor—less an artistic exhibition than a historical and social study of painting that reflects on the value of pictorial expression today.
Translated from Italian by Marguerite Shore.
