The title of Luca Vitone’s exhibition at Galleria Emi Fontana, “Ceneri di Milano” (Ashes of Milan), seems catastrophic. Visitors find themselves looking at what seems like the remains of a city razed during wartime. In reality, what is on view are the incinerated remains of the city’s trash, which Vitone has used to create gray monochrome canvases. The artist begins with his anachronistic concept of anti-pigment, which is expressed through the choice of a velvety, dense, corporeal material (here, it’s ashes; in earlier works, he used dust). The monochrome, with its mute refinement, is an even more surprising statement at a moment when we seem to be experiencing the end of the modernism that gave birth to the form. The material and form, then, are both ends of a process, and their pairing can be understood to represent the final and definitive episode of Western hegemony in and over the world. For many years, the work of this artist has focused on physical locations. Milan, the city where he lives, is passing through a specific moment in the search for its cultural, social, and political identity. In moving beyond merely formal concerns, the work presented here is an intelligent reflection not only on the language of art but also on place.
Translated from Italian by Marguerite Shore.
