MAURIZIO NANNUCCI
WHAT TO SEE WHAT NOT TO SEE
4 May - 22 July 2017
MAURIZIO NANNUCCI
WHAT TO SEE WHAT NOT TO SEE
4 May - 22 July 2017
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Galleria Fumagalli presents the exhibition by Maurizio Nannucci “What to see what not to see”. The collaboration between the Gallery and Maurizio Nannucci begins in 2004 in Bergamo with his participation in the exhibition “AA.VV. 30”, followed in 2005 by the solo show “Neon Words”. “What to see what not to see” is the first solo exhibition of the artist in Italy after the large retrospective at the Maxxi in Rome in 2015. The exhibition consists of a sequence of five new works by Maurizio Nannucci, realized in large neon of different colours that, through images, words and meanings interact with the gallery spaces. In particular, the project focuses on the reiteration of affirmative and negative phrases that contain some changes concerning the sign and inherent the meaning. Through this strict dialectic between two opposite poles, the artist’s research tends to highlight how the fulcrum of his own achievements is to be sought not in the effectiveness of a self-concluded act, in a peremptory affirmation, but in the continuous suspension of the semiologic and semantic components of the reality in a precarious but generative space between affirmation and negation, between the impossibility of the response and the performativity of the demand, in a continuous expansion of its latent possibilities.
The works appear as a series of questions in tension that reflect on the condition of man in society in a twofold relationship, with others and with oneself. The urgency that arises every day is to make a choice: what to see, what to say, what to think, what to perceive, what to love … how to orient our decisions. The meaning is always elusive, unresolved, but the purpose of Nannucci is not to offer solutions in itself, but to reflect and allude to the different possibilities of reading and interpreting the signs that surround us, in a continuous opening and declination of the semantic components intrinsic to their own accomplishments. Nannucci’s work gives a symbolic value to the individual words, he himself says: “I believe that the image transcends the limits of representation, becoming a mental image, a virtual image that is born of a dream or an eye-catching dream, a visual and relative image, which can be summoned by one word, one sound, or one perfume…” Reducing visual media to language and writing, Nannucci pursues an artistic practice that evokes sensory perception, which transmits new spatial experiences and activates an exchange between the work and the viewer, motivating him in a free play of thought to a more in-depth and renewed relationship between one’s self, sensorial and conceptual, and the surrounding.
Maurizio Nannucci (Firenze 1939) è tra i protagonisti dell’arte italiana degli ultimi decenni e tra i più conosciuti a livello internazionale. Sin dalla metà degli anni Sessanta esplora il rapporto tra arte, linguaggio e immagine, tra luce-colore e spazio, creando inedite proposte concettuali, caratterizzate dall’utilizzo di media diversi: neon, fotografia, video, suono, edizioni e libri d’artista. Sono del 1967 le prime opere al neon con le quali l’artista situa le immagini-parole in un circuito fluido che attraversa il colore, il segno e il significato. Nei primi anni ’90 collabora con architetti come Renzo Piano, Massimiliano Fuksas, Mario Botta, Nicolas Grimshaw, Stephan Braunfels, e realizza numerosi progetti per edifici pubblici. Numerose sono state recentemente le installazioni di Nannucci in spazi pubblici a Milano: dalla grande “And what about the truth” in Triennale (2006) a “No more excuses”, realizzato per l’Expo 2015 sulla facciata del Refettorio Ambrosiano di Piazzale Greco.
Text
Galleria Fumagalli presents the exhibition by Maurizio Nannucci “What to see what not to see”. The collaboration between the Gallery and Maurizio Nannucci begins in 2004 in Bergamo with his participation in the exhibition “AA.VV. 30”, followed in 2005 by the solo show “Neon Words”. “What to see what not to see” is the first solo exhibition of the artist in Italy after the large retrospective at the Maxxi in Rome in 2015. The exhibition consists of a sequence of five new works by Maurizio Nannucci, realized in large neon of different colours that, through images, words and meanings interact with the gallery spaces. In particular, the project focuses on the reiteration of affirmative and negative phrases that contain some changes concerning the sign and inherent the meaning. Through this strict dialectic between two opposite poles, the artist’s research tends to highlight how the fulcrum of his own achievements is to be sought not in the effectiveness of a self-concluded act, in a peremptory affirmation, but in the continuous suspension of the semiologic and semantic components of the reality in a precarious but generative space between affirmation and negation, between the impossibility of the response and the performativity of the demand, in a continuous expansion of its latent possibilities.
The works appear as a series of questions in tension that reflect on the condition of man in society in a twofold relationship, with others and with oneself. The urgency that arises every day is to make a choice: what to see, what to say, what to think, what to perceive, what to love … how to orient our decisions. The meaning is always elusive, unresolved, but the purpose of Nannucci is not to offer solutions in itself, but to reflect and allude to the different possibilities of reading and interpreting the signs that surround us, in a continuous opening and declination of the semantic components intrinsic to their own accomplishments. Nannucci’s work gives a symbolic value to the individual words, he himself says: “I believe that the image transcends the limits of representation, becoming a mental image, a virtual image that is born of a dream or an eye-catching dream, a visual and relative image, which can be summoned by one word, one sound, or one perfume…” Reducing visual media to language and writing, Nannucci pursues an artistic practice that evokes sensory perception, which transmits new spatial experiences and activates an exchange between the work and the viewer, motivating him in a free play of thought to a more in-depth and renewed relationship between one’s self, sensorial and conceptual, and the surrounding.
Maurizio Nannucci (Firenze 1939) è tra i protagonisti dell’arte italiana degli ultimi decenni e tra i più conosciuti a livello internazionale. Sin dalla metà degli anni Sessanta esplora il rapporto tra arte, linguaggio e immagine, tra luce-colore e spazio, creando inedite proposte concettuali, caratterizzate dall’utilizzo di media diversi: neon, fotografia, video, suono, edizioni e libri d’artista. Sono del 1967 le prime opere al neon con le quali l’artista situa le immagini-parole in un circuito fluido che attraversa il colore, il segno e il significato. Nei primi anni ’90 collabora con architetti come Renzo Piano, Massimiliano Fuksas, Mario Botta, Nicolas Grimshaw, Stephan Braunfels, e realizza numerosi progetti per edifici pubblici. Numerose sono state recentemente le installazioni di Nannucci in spazi pubblici a Milano: dalla grande “And what about the truth” in Triennale (2006) a “No more excuses”, realizzato per l’Expo 2015 sulla facciata del Refettorio Ambrosiano di Piazzale Greco.
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