Pannaggi FOCUS Award 2019-2021 curated by Loretta Fabrizi. The winners of the last 3 editions of the Prize for the new generations of Marche artists. May 27 – June 24, 2022.

On display the works of Elena Giustozzi , Serena Vallese and Michele Carbonari , winners of the 2021, 2020 and 2019 editions respectively. Opening May 27th at 6pm .

The Centro, in collaboration with CeSMa (Centro Studi Marche) and in line with its forty-year promotion of young talents at national and international level, welcomes in its exhibition spaces the winners of the last three editions (2019 – 2021) of the Pannaggi / New Generation Award, an initiative of the “Amici di Palazzo Buonaccorsi” organization from Macerata in support of young artists for the promotion of art contemporary in the Marche and in Italy. & nbsp;

The exhibition offers itself as a privileged observatory on contemporary art through the works of three young talents. A three-part exhibition, therefore, which in comparison by work explores the languages ​​of the visual, unravels their different expressive modes, absolutely original in their being modulated on creative scores that each connects to their own existential rhythms. Concretions in forms and images of visions that mark the relationship that is always problematic and always to be built with reality, which however, precisely in its persevering escape from grasp, constantly feeds the horizon of the imagination with new energy. & Nbsp;

Elena Giustozzi (Pannaggi Award 2021) born in Civitanova Marche (MC) in 1983, lives in Senigallia (AN) – through INSIDE proposes the liquid vision of a microcosm imprisoned in a few centimeters of water that the high quality of the painting and the optical device allow you to live in the fluid and silent depth of a “garden in motion and without end” like cosmic life. < / p>

Serena Vallese (Premio Pannaggi 2020) – born in Giulianova (TE) in 1981, lives and works in Montone (TE) – presents FOGLIA-ME , a cultured and meditated that explores the theme of the fragility of the living made with equally fragile materials such as paper, plaster, poor, cellulose pulp and modulated on the pervasive and absorbent white “dazzling waiting”.

Michele Carbonari (Premio Pannaggi 2019) – born in Recanati in 1980, lives and works in Macerata – with THE LAST IMAGE he develops a figurativeness that speaks of things of everyday life sublimated by the light of painting, capable of giving dignity of singular existence even to the most anonymous and silent objects, revealing “epiphanies of the invisible”.

le opere di Elena Giustozzi, Serena Vallese e Michele Carbonari, vincitori rispettivamente delle edizioni 2021, 2020 e 2019. Opening 27 maggio alle 18.

Il Centro Luigi Di Sarro, in collaborazione con il CeSMa (Centro Studi Marche) e in linea con la sua quarantennale attività di promozione di giovani talenti a livello nazionale e internazionale, accoglie nei suoi spazi espositivi i vincitori delle ultime tre edizioni (2019 – 2021) del Premio Pannaggi/Nuova Generazione, un’iniziativa dell’associazione “Amici di Palazzo Buonaccorsi” di Macerata a sostegno dei giovani artisti per la promozione dell’arte contemporanea nelle Marche e in Italia. 

La mostra si offre come un osservatorio privilegiato sull’arte contemporanea attraverso le opere di tre giovani talenti. Un’esposizione dunque a tre voci che nel confronto per opera scandaglia i linguaggi del visivo, ne squaderna le diverse modalità espressive, assolutamente originali nel loro essere modulate su spartiti creativi che ciascuno raccorda ai propri ritmi esistenziali. Concrezioni in forme e immagini di visioni che scandiscono il rapporto sempre problematico e sempre da costruire con il reale, che tuttavia, proprio nel suo perseverante sfuggire alla presa, alimenta costantemente di nuova energia l’orizzonte dell’immaginario. 

Elena Giustozzi (Premio Pannaggi 2021)nata a Civitanova Marche (MC) nel 1983, vive a Senigallia (AN) – attraverso INSIDE propone la visione liquida di un microcosmo imprigionato in pochi centimetri d’acqua che l’alta qualità della pittura e il dispositivo ottico consentono di abitare nella profondità fluida e silenziosa di un “giardino in movimento e senza fine” come la vita cosmica.

Serena Vallese (Premio Pannaggi 2020) – nata a Giulianova (TE) nel 1981, vive e lavora a Montone (TE) -presentaFOGLIA-ME, un lavoro colto e meditato che sonda il tema della fragilità del vivente realizzato con materiali altrettanto fragili come carta, gesso, povere, pasta di cellulosa e modulato sul bianco pervasivo e assorbente “abbagliante d’attesa”.

Michele Carbonari (Premio Pannaggi 2019) – nato a Recanati nel 1980, vive e lavora a Macerata -conTHE LAST IMAGE mette a punto una figuratività che parla delle cose del quotidiano sublimate dalla luce della pittura, capace di donare dignità di singolare esistenza anche agli oggetti più anonimi e muti rivelando “epifanie dell’invisibile”. 

A NICCA. Marcela Gottardo and Flavia Monteiro. Curated by Steven Y. Wong. 2019 November, 7th-30th.

A Nicca, refers to a core doctrine of Buddhism that is the idea of impermanence, one that articulates that existence is in a constant state of change. The etymology Anicca is a negation of the root word “nicca” meaning stability and continuity. The works of Marcela Gottardo and Flavia Monteiro are less of a negation of permanence but rather explore the Buddhist concept of Anicca through the instability and transformations of materiality and being. Together they interrogate how we see through the subjective lens of our own knowledge and embrace our destined impermanence, beyond the philosophical and existential crisis of nihilism. 

Gottardo employs familiar everyday materials and or themes to create fragmentations of one’s temporal existence and conception of self. These fragments are assembled and treated as unique forms that are in a stasis of decay, yet echo the memory of organic forms and negative space. Gottardo’s work presents material explorations of form, resulting in a survey of art works that evoke an archeological indexing, encouraging a visual unearthing of artifacts. 

Monteiro showcases several bodies of works that include suspended cyanotypes that echo garments drying on a clothesline; and also include organic shapes of everyday objects including the shadows of desert flora. Monteiro examines her adaptation to living in a new desert environment by embracing the desert sun and its shadows in the creation of her cyanotypes. These works refute her arid environment through the deep blues inherent to cyanotypes, the liquid process developing these images, and through blockages of the desert sun’s radiation in exposing the cyanotypes. These cyanotypes are also pared with photographs that reinforce the deserts yearning for water. Monteiro contrasts the cyanotypes and photographs with her warm paintings of grids and structures that suggest a containment of not only color, but the specter of fluids enveloping the void. Monteiro’s practice examines ideas of transformation through the visual entropy of structure, documenting ones environment and the desire to contain.

FriedrichWilhelm Nietzsche was critical of Buddhist concept of Anicca, postulating it in opposition to his idea of “will to power”, where he equated the idea of impermanence with nihilism. Gottardo and Monteiro’s works challenge his accusations of the ascetic practice Buddhism (and Christianity) as a “will to nothingness”, through their affirmative exploration of the ever-changing material and environment. Their works speak to their transition of impermanent lived lives within the Brazilian diaspora. Ultimately this exhibition embraces our world’s reality of impermanence with a goal of acceptance of the instable and unknown. (Steven Y. Wong, USA) 

Steven Y. Wong was born Los Angeles where he currently is the curator at Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. Previously he was Interim Executive Director and senior staff curator at the Chinese American Museum where he developed and implemented both contemporary art and history exhibitions. Steven has lectured at UC Santa Barbara and was an adjunct professor at Ventura College and Pasadena City College in Asian American Studies, History and Art Studio Departments. Steven holds a Masters in Asian American Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles and a Master in Fine Arts from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Marcela Gottardo was born in Brazil. She lives and works in Pistoia, Italy. Marcela’s artwork utilizes materials and processes to investigate the nature of being and becoming. She received a Master of Fine Arts in 2014, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting in 2012, at Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, California, USA. 

Flavia Monteiro was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She lives and works in the Coachella Valley desert in California (USA). She explores altered perceptions by continually reworking her artwork until preconceptions and expectations are broken and a transformation is completed. Flavia has exhibited her work in California at Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Palm Springs Art Museum, Vincent Price Museum, The Bolsky Gallery, Los Angeles International Airport, and has created public artworks for the cities of Malibu and Glendale. Her artwork has been exhibited in galleries in Rio de Janeiro and at the Ibero-American Art Salon at the Mexican Cultural Institute (Washington, DC). Flavia earned an MFA from Otis College of Art and Design in 2013, and BA degrees in Art Education and Social Communication. She completed postgraduate studies in Art Therapy. Before moving to the US in 2003, she worked as an Art Educator and developed art education programs at Colégio Pedro II, the Brazilian Federal model school in Rio.

Luigi Di Sarro. Theater in the form of photography, curated by Lorenzo Mango. Italian Cultural Institute Belgrade for the 15th Contemporary Art Day Amaci-Maeci. 3-22 October 2019.

The Italian Cultural Institute of Belgrade presents Luigi Di Sarro. Theater in the form of photography, an exhibition dedicated to Luigi Di Sarro, an artist active in the Sixties and Seventies, a period that today is being brought to the attention of critics for the innovative thrusts brought to contemporary art. The exhibition, organized on the occasion of the forty-year anniversary of the artist’s death in collaboration with the Documentation Center of Contemporary Artistic Research Luigi Di Sarro, is curated by Prof. Lorenzo Mango of the University of Naples “L’Orientale” and will be opened at the Italian Cultural Institute of Belgrade on October 3rd 2019 at 6.30 pm, where it will remain on show until October 22nd.

IIC Belgrade participates with this event in the Day of the Contemporary, promoted by AMACI that in the last editions, with the collaboration started by the Mibac with Maeci, also involves Embassies, Consulates and Italian Cultural Institutes abroad in organizing events for the enhancement of contemporary Italian art and culture.

The inauguration will be preceded by the presentation of the book by Carla Cucchiarelli That night in Rome, a biography of the artist who died prematurely, only thirty-seven in 1979, killed for a fatal misunderstanding in the tense climate of the Seventies in Italy.

The international promotion project linked to the forty years from the death, is inspired by an intuition of the same Di Sarro – who in a pen drawing had indicated places on the terrestrial globe “Rome, New York, Tokyo and … who knows where” -, was promoted and realized in numerous locations abroad and after the Belgrade stop will continue for other exhibitions in the world.

https://iicbelgrado.esteri.it/iic_belgrado/it/gli_eventi/calendario/2019/10/mostra-luigi-di-sarro-teatro-in.html

Return. Rome-Berlin The exchange project with Verein Berliner Künstler will exhibit 5 italian artists. Opening 13 September, 6pm.

The project Return Berlin-Rome | Rome-Berlin, born from an idea by Susanne Kessler, promotes the collaboration of Centro Luigi Di Sarro with the VBK-Verein Berliner Künstler and aims to start an exchange between the artistic realities of Italy and Germany, through the dialogue between the two capitals where the proposing associations are located.

Andrea Aquilanti, Angelo Casciello, Veronica Montanino, Pamela Pintus and Sara Spizzichino are the italian artists on show at the VBK-Gallery, from September 13th to October 6th 2019.

The project, carried out in two stages, brought the works of 5 German artists (Birgit Borggrebe, Jürgen Kellig, Susanne Kessler, Nele Probst, Marianne Stoll) to Centro Luigi Sarro in Rome in April 2019.

ARP 7ED – TALENTS EXCHANGE: WINNERS LIST

Giulia Fumagalli and Alessio Barchitta from Italy, Viktoria Nianiou and Salvador Gomez from Spain, Zana Masombuka and Grace Mokalapa from South Africa. The Centro Luigi Di Sarro’s international residency programme, realized with the contribution of the MAECI, is aimed at young U30 artists. Cape Town, Granada and Rome are the Talents Exchange stages, between November and December 2019.

The 7th Edition of the ARP-Art Residency Project will start from Cape Town in November. The residency program for young artists under 30 is conceived and promoted by the Centro Luigi Di Sarro, through an innovative formula that involves several countries.

Talents exchange is an artistic adventure of experimentation and intercultural dialogue that will see a group of 6 artists traveling together first to Cape Town, then to Granada and finally to Rome, for almost 2 months.

The program will allow the group of artists, selected through a competition and by a jury of experts, to undertake a training trip between North and South of the world. The course, consisting of 3 periods of residency in South Africa, Spain and Italy, ideally combines the Mediterranean with Sub-Saharan Africa and acts as a bridge of knowledge between Europe and South Africa, a leading country on the continent for cultural and artistic growth. The winners will have the opportunity to carry out a research project and discuss with the group to set up local events on the way and a final exhibition in Rome in December.

The winning projects of ARP 7Edition range in the different fields of the figurative arts and investigate the most contemporary themes, all oriented to the bet of knowledge.

Over 50 contacts and 38 valid applications came to the selection of the jury composed of: Jake Aikman, Satellite, Cape Town; Alessandra Atti Di Sarro, Centro Luigi Di Sarro; Khanya Mashabela, Art critic, Cape Town; Marisa Mancilla, Facultad de Bellas Artes UGR, Universidad de Granada; Francesco Ozzola, Suburbia, Granada; Carlotta Sylos Calò, University of Tor Vergata, Rome.

ARP 7th Edition – Talents Exchange is realized with the contribution of MAECI – Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and Media Aid Onlus, in partnership with Suburbia Granada, Spain, and Satellite Cape Town, South Africa, and with the collaboration of Rainbow Media NPO.


VAA 2019. The winners are Jabu Nadia Newman with “Untitled:Friends” and Niccolò Masini with “White time”. At Cinema Labia in Cape Town the ceremony, next screening will take place at cortoLovere Festival in Italy.

Screening and Awards Ceremony of the 2 winners and 8 finalists of the VAA-Video Art Awards 2nd edition took place on May 14th at the historic Labia Cinema in Cape Town. Now the VAA screening evening moves to Italy where the cortoLovere Festival will host the event on September 26th at the Tadini Art Academy.

The prize-giving event took place in the historic Cinema Labia, Tuesday 14 May 2019. All the 10 shortlisted works in the two selections (Italian and South African) have been projected.

The VAA – Video Art Awards is designed and promoted by the Centro Luigi Di Sarro with the contribution of Italian Cultural Institute of Pretoria and the International Short Film Festival cortoLovere, where the VAA Top10 will be screened again (23-28 September 2019).

Niccolò Masini CV http://www.niccolomasini.com

He studied in the classrooms of the IED in Milan, graduating in 2011 in Illustration and Animation courses. Thus began his career in the world of visual art. However, the definitive turning point accomplished by moving to the Netherlands, where he attended the prestigious Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, from which he graduated in 2015 with a specialization in Audio Visual Arts. During his time at Rietveld, he has the opportunity to follow an international exchange program at RMIT University in Melbourne. The Dutch experience will open to him doors to several international experiences: Australia, Argentina, the United States, Kuwait and Canada. Winner of numerous international prizes, competitions and residences, from 2016 he began to devote himself entirely to his personal research, which he combined with commissioned work. Practicing in three continents, his work has been exhibited internationally in countries such as Australia, Canada, Argentina, Japan, Holland and Italy. To date, he lives and works between Genoa and Montréal.

“White Time” still

“White Time”

“There are a certain amount of ordinary moments in life that are con- sidered neither here or there, these are spaces for otherness, for some considered irrelevant, that are simultaneously physical and mental, such as the space of a phone call or the moment when you see yourself in the mirror.” Michel Foucault

These spaces of otherness are infinite, disposed on time framed dimensions that inexorably passes through, with or without our consideration. The experience of the traveler, consisting of a series of movements within space, producing a phenomenon of a new order, where geography overtakes knowledge. Our conception of spatiality shapes our perception of time, and, on an individual scale, defines our way of perceiving movement. Spaces trace an inventory of the adventure of knowledge, omitting nothing; knowl- edge traces cartography of known lands, omitting nothing. Acting as a prelude to a subjective perception of a suspension in time, White Time is a video installation where a simple figure stands in a not specific dimension. Surrounded by the surface of the black screen different elements interact with each other, mutating through the composition of an undefined spatial location. Niccolò Masini

Jabu Nadia Newman CV https://jabunew.tumblr.com/

Jabu Newman was born and raised in Plumstead, a suburb of Cape Town. She is 25 years old and studied at UCT, University of Cape Town, where she graduated in Political Science and then specialized in Visual and Media Arts, then deepening cinema and directing at the African Arts Institute. He works in film production and continues his artistic research with video art and photography works, mainly oriented to the exploration of human and social relations. He won the VAA award with the video “Untitled: Friends”.

Jabu Nadia Newman

“UNTILED:FRIENDS”

The title Untitled:Friends alludes to the complexity of chosen relationships, specifically how deeply bound two souls who share no family relation can be: a strong connection that no title or description can truly articulate. 

Like most of Newman’s body of work, the film specifically focuses on femme binary identity and relationships. The storyline is intentionally centered around femme friendships and simultaneously challenges and celebrates them against a backdrop of a mundane heteronormative neighborhood, where these layered and complex identities are prosecuted and undervalued. 

Untitled:Friends was shot, written, directed and edited by Newman over a period of two years and reads like a personal visual diary, in which she invites us into her childhood and teenage years in Plumstead. Come per la maggior parte dei lavori di Newman, il film pone un’attenzione particolare all’identità e alle relazioni nel mondo femminile. Il racconto è volutamente centrato su una storia di amicizia fra donne in cui contemporaneamente si sfida e si festeggia, in una atmosfera mondana, quel substrato di codici di etero-normalità in cui le identità stratificate e complesse sono perseguitate e sottovalutate. Untitled:friends è stato girato, scritto, diretto e montato da Newman nel corso di due anni e si offre come un personale diario visivo, nel quale l’autrice svela i suoi anni d’infanzia e adolescenza nel quartiere di Plumstead. (Jabu Nadia Newman)

“Untitled:Friends” still
VAA Screening Programme

RETURN Berlin/Rome 2019 April 4th – May 4th. Exchange project with VEREIN BERLINER KÜNSTLER under patronage of Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Berlin. Opening 4.4.2019, 6-8pm

The project RETURN Berlin-Rome | Rome-Berlin, born from an idea by Susanne Kessler, is curated by the Centro Di Sarro in collaboration with the Verein Berliner Künstler, and under the patronage of the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Berlin, with the intention of starting an exchange between the artistic realities of Italy and Germany through the dialogue between the two cities where the proposing associations are based. The project involves two parts: RETURN Berlin-Rome will exhibit the works of 5 German artists (Birgit Borggrebe, Jürgen Kellig, Susanne Kessler, Nele Probst, Marianne Stoll) and the works at the Centro Di Sarro, from 4 April to 4 May 2019 subsequently RETURN Rome-Berlin will see the exhibition of the works of 5 Italian artists (Andrea Aquilanti, Angelo Casciello, Veronica Montanino, Pamela Pintus, Sara Spizzichino) at the Galerie VBK-Verein Berliner Künstler, from 13 September to 6 October 2019.

Birgit Borggrebe.Born in Arnsberg, lives and works in Berlin.
“The harsh and abstract character of our cities, the globalization of the modern world, are in contrast with what remains of Nature: here a tree, a herd of goats there, yet even the clouds themselves shine with suspicious colors. Borggrebe’s images are kaleidoscopes, poetic encounters with a nightmarish reality that could soon cover a large part of our planet. An aesthetic protest spreads from the paintings: that our world is not as it should be. Although it seems strange, the futuristic and apocalyptic landscapes depicted in his paintings are permeated by something that could be described as a “nostalgia for Paradise”. (Kai Michel, Zurich)

Jürgen Kellig. Born in Berlin where he lives and works.
My drawings deal with rhythm and structure, in particular with the interaction between chaos and order, with the similarities between micro and macrocosm. Although reworked in a concrete way, these works can recall organic networks, as well as technological networks. (Jürgen Kellig)
Jürgen Kellig draws freehand. The accuracy of its graphic elements does not follow a program, a pre-established scheme. It simulates the certainty of geometric laws, as in a free zone between micrological proximity and macrological distance: a subject already addressed by the author in previous works. Consequently, the titles of his drawings suggest conceptual clarity: “notation”, “score”, “interconnection”, “civilization”. They transform images into conceptual associations. Images that are the result of associative processes related to a graphic self-referentiality, fixing point as point, line as line and plan as plan or their arbitrary succession. (Wolfgang Siano, from the text in the catalog “Implacable, between line and line and beyond”)

Susanne Kessler. Born in Wuppertal in 1955, she lives and works in Berlin and Rome.
She studied painting and graphics in Berlin at the Hochschule der Künste (UDK) and in London at the Royal College of Art (RCA). She prefers large installations, both indoors and outdoors. She has taught at California State University (CSU) and at the City University of New York (CUNY). Business trips have taken her to Ethiopia, Guatemala, Mali, Pakistan, India and Iran. All these places have left traces in her work. Her installations, sometimes ephemeral, are published in numerous catalogs and books.
The former director of the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum Raimund Stecker describes the artist’s method as follows: “Susanne Kessler constantly plays with separation and contact, closeness and distance, reality and illusion. The tangible is sometimes lost in the incomprehensible and the inconceivable becomes tangible, the chaotic becomes cosmic, the messy sometimes rational, and the certainties seem confused “.

Nele Probst. Since 1995 he lives and works in Berlin.
From 1989 to 1993 he studied Visual Communication, Fachhochschule für Gestaltung, Mannheim with Prof. Günter Slabon, Prof. Wolf Magin, Prof. Roland Fürst, Prof. Eckhard Neumann. From 1993 to 1995 he lived and worked in Hamburg.
In the works of Nele Probst, both in painting and in sculpture and installations, the additive process, understood as collection and thickening, plays an important role. The narrative moment and its associations are reflected both in the content and in the structure of his works. Color and material are in the foreground. His playful, experimental and sensitive relationship with materials and composition creates a sense of lightness and joy that characterizes his work and involves the viewer.

Marianne Stoll. Born in Darmstadt, lives and works in Berlin.
She studied art history with Prof. Uwe M. Schneede, Ludwig Maximilian Universität of Munich.
Through sculptures and drawings (…) Marianne Stoll explores in a playful but always serious, lucid and surprising way the many facets of living, of the house, of the origins – and of the constant threat of loss of a dwelling, of a shelter. In her compositions, Marianne recalls the question of how one should inhabit the World-Home, how to settle into this dwelling, which has not been handed over to humanity on a turnkey basis. With daring changes of perspective, the small and the large, the solid and the fragile, the dangerous and the harmless come together in the act of drawing (…) the graphic forms satisfy and nourish each other, in a strange analogy with creating a habitat for humans. (Dorothée Bauerle-Willert, from the text in the catalog “Dream Houses”)

Thanks to Giorgio Benni for photographs of the exhibition in slideshow.

Meteoriti a Roma – Giorgio Russi – curated by Antonello Rubini – Opening March 9th at 6.00 pm.

“I think it is not difficult to immediately realize that the most relevant key to reading for the intelligence of Giorgio Russi’s painting regards the dream-like dimension”. So the great Enrico Crispolti – who worked closely with Russi, at least for all the eighties, considering him then one of the most significant figures emerging in the Italian artistic landscape – opened the part dedicated to him in his text in the catalog of shows Casciello, Gadaleta, Russi. A current triangulation, held at the Galleria Comunale d’Arte Contemporanea of ​​Arezzo in 1986. A statement, therefore, of more than thirty years ago, but which besides well framing the imaginative area of ​​making of Russians of that period, the best known (among the most iconic celestial landscapes dominated by the presence of strongly disquieting birds, first, and more essential scenarios, now more less vaguely landscaped inhabited by mysterious “flames”, then), is perfectly fitting also to the current work of the artist , which constitutes the present exhibition. And it is the sign not only of a coherence, of a continuity (even if his art has made its way since then), but of the existence of a certain field to which Russi necessarily continues to respond, thus feeling almost always intimately as own. (…) Antonello Rubini

On show 20-25 recent works by Giorgio Russi including paintings and sculptures.

Giorgio Russi was born in Turin on December 29, 1946, he lives and works in Treviso. After the Diploma of Art Master and Applied Arts Maturity he obtained the Diploma of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome under the guidance of Pericle Fazzini. From 1971 to 1988 he was a lecturer in Sculpture at the State Art High School of Teramo. Since the early eighties he has carried out an intense and significant artistic activity by participating in numerous national and international exhibitions. Winner of the National Competition, from 1988 to 2011 he was Dean of the Liceo Artistico Statale di Treviso.

VAA-Video Art Awards II Edition Italy-South Africa. CALL CLOSED

Theme “Interconnections: Legacy and Identity”. A very topical subject for this 2nd edition of the competition that Centro Di Sarro dedicates to artists under 45 who work with video and new media. Call CLOSED – UNDER SELECTION.

LUIGI DI SARRO.The living body of painting, curated by Paola Ballesi. June 7th-September 7th, 2018. Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Cologne

Following the stage on Stuttgart, the exhibition LUIGI DI SARRO.The living body of painting, curated by Paola Ballesi, opens in the spaces of the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Cologne. The exhibition continues the celebrations of the 40th anniversary of the death of Luigi Di Sarro.

“Di Sarro’s creativity investigates various artistic and scientific fields, such as painting, philosophy, poetry, mathematics, technology, which involved the aspects of the process more than those related to representativeness. His approach is rather analytical. We note that this diversity of interests is the result of his great curiosity and desire to deepen the issues he was dealing with. In the cycle of the gouaches of 1964 he repeated the motif of the square, and in the pictures partially realized with the “dripping” process, in which he sprays the canvas with color, he shows two different procedures, two opposite principles: repetitiveness and expressiveness. In his oil and acrylic paintings instead he experiments and plays with the three-dimensionality on the surface. Today his works offer a richness and a stratified meaning, which in the course of time have lost nothing of their artistic potential”, writes Maria Mazza, Director of IIC Cologne in the Prologue of the catalogue which offers a curatorial note and a large critical anthology.

On show 38 painting realized by Di Sarro between the Sixties and the Seventies with various techniques from gouache to oil, acrylic and mixed media that “decline the phenomenology of the sign born from the gesture of the body” – as Paola Ballesi explains – “With the ‘spelling’ of the body, understood in its variations, ranging from the physical presence of the painter on the canvas through the unique and continuous sign, to the ‘figuration’ of the body felt as a map of energy, Di Sarro subtracts the creation at each formal stylization. Perhaps he would have preferred, as an artist-physician, to make the language of art become a living body that acts and reacts in contact with new and different stimuli each time”.