Luca Pancrazzi
12 Feb - 01 May 2011
LUCA PANCRAZZI
Blow Flow Raw
12 February – 1 May, 2011
Blow – Flow – Raw is the title of the new solo show that Luca Pancrazzi has conceived for the exhibition spaces of the Galleria Continua.
Pancrazzi has always focused on the intimate universe of painting and its interaction with the viewer, and in this show he presents his most recent output relating to this line of inquiry. On display are a series of new works, ranging from the immateriality and transparency of the monochrome paintings to the rhythmic sign of the drawings on paper, and through to the installations, with which he sets up a direct dialogue between space and material.
“For a while now I’ve been cultivating the habit of giving a form also to the most abstract of thoughts. Those which are nothing more than an initial formless idea, to which I at least attribute a colour. It is a spontaneous and perhaps naturally cultivated movement, but this generates dozens of colours, forms and signs that flow around in my thoughts at the same time. From the less defined forms to the full-scale projects, this vortex of emanated pieces moves, uncombed, around my bald head. The best ones, perhaps the weightiest, land somewhere close by, on the first surface they happen across. Often onto paper. A mass in a disorder of appearance moves around in a disoriented fashion in that phase of chaotic liberty until it is grasped by the expository contingency when it then has to be represented.
This direct level of flow, in which the idea prevails over the realization, the cultivation of a certain independence over the opportunistic structure, and a certain rawness with respect to the finished package, multiplies the possibilities rather than the necessities.
I am allowing to blow around, “inside” and “outside”, all the thoughts in the form of colour or of sign that position themselves, from one moment to the next and with new and previously unseen hierarchies, pretty much everywhere, even if they privilege sheets of paper and books full of blank or already marked pages. These communities of pages are suited to hosting centrifugal and centripetal thoughts, pieces of paper of all types, shapes and sizes, scraps and off-cuts of other thinking activities. Sheets of paper gathered and stapled together, sitting on tables, in order or in disorder, stuck to the wall, held in place in corners by masking tape or stuck with their backs to the wall so as to kick at the slightest movement of the air, sheets of paper that have ended up on the floor which look at me from below, sheets held down by improvised paper weights or bound together in books. And again, open books and stacked-up books, resting or supporting....
The book as an assemblage of sheets of paper to draw on or gather together and reread in a chronological or casual sequence – this, indirectly, is the subject of the exhibition. The book understood as a city that houses communities of signs and thoughts, a utopic city of drawings that reside as anarchic and self-sufficient citizens. At once a booklet and a passport to freedom for the very signs that are so fond of blowing in minds and in rooms.
The drawing frees itself of the draughtsman, and entrusts itself to the journey as the definitive possibility of existence, and organizes itself in books in order to travel better. Books understood as vehicles, space craft of drawing with heterogeneous crews.
Blow is a movement of the air generated by a draught, a gust of wind, which sends light things like sheets of paper flying, and creates domestic whirlwinds and tornadoes that reposition everything in a new way. Flow is a liquid flux, which is generated when thoughts flow, it is the uninterruptable flow of the mind which requires the skill of the hand in representing those thoughts. Raw is the raw flavour of that movement of thought that generates off-cuts of pure signs destined to be primary material, ancient and necessary. These three onomatopoeic terms of global import are the archetype of the organic action that generates the metaphysics of our lives, from the lightest things to the heaviest and most present ones.
This show will be decided in the moment in which all the fluttering pieces of paper come to rest, momentarily, in the available spaces.”
Luca Pancrazzi
Luca Pancrazzi was born in Figline Valdarno (Florence) in 1961. He divides his time between Milan and Tuscany. In his artistic career to date, Pancrazzi has used expressive media that range from painting to video, sound, sculpture and large installation pieces. The central theme of his work is the artistic process and the deconstruction of reality through the gaze. The crossing of the boundary between inside and outside, the staggering of time and perception, continual gaps and serial variations – these are the elements used by the artist in his explorations. His observation of reality, his almost anthropological investigation of the landscape is never rendered in an objective and documentary way, but is always mediated and reworked through other languages, filtered by memory, and finally interiorized. What results is an acute sensitivity for issues relating to the vision, construction, reproduction and transmission of images, and likewise for the perception and definition of spatial and temporal coordinates in contemporary reality. A non-narration that revolves around the concepts of centre and periphery, and the relations created between the definition of the urban landscape and processes of perception of individuality. Luca Pancrazzi has shown his work extensively both in Italy and abroad.
Recent shows include PastPresentFuture – Highlights from the UniCredit Group Collection, Yapı Kredi Cultural Centre, Istanbul, Turkey (2010); STILL IMAGE, Contemporary Italian Painting, Galleria Continua, Beijing, China (2010); Made in Filanda, La Filanda, Pieve a Presciano (2010); Sphères 3 2010, Galleria Continua / Le Moulin, Boissy-le-Chatel, France (2010); La scultura Italiana del XXI secolo, Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Milan (2010); Glass Stress, Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti – Palazzo Franchetti, Venice (2009); Collectors' Choice I + II, ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany (2009); Sphères, Galleria Continua / Le Moulin, Boissy-le-Châtel, France (2008); 15° Quadriennale d’arte di Roma, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, (2008); Focus on Contemporary Italian Art, permanent collection, MAMbo, Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna (2008); Aktuelle Positionen italienischer Kunst, Landesmuseum Joanneum Künstlerhaus Graz, Germany (2008); Fragile Beauty, glass in the focus of art, Stiftung Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf, Germany (2008); La città che sale. We try to build the future, Arcos, Benevento; MACRO, Rome (2007); Expérience Pommery, Domaine Pommery, Reims, France (2007); Camera con vista, Palazzo Reale, Milan (2007); COLLEZIONISMI, il mondo come voluttà e simulazione, Assab One, Milan (2007); 1:1, II Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Special Guest, Moscow, Russia (2007).
Blow Flow Raw
12 February – 1 May, 2011
Blow – Flow – Raw is the title of the new solo show that Luca Pancrazzi has conceived for the exhibition spaces of the Galleria Continua.
Pancrazzi has always focused on the intimate universe of painting and its interaction with the viewer, and in this show he presents his most recent output relating to this line of inquiry. On display are a series of new works, ranging from the immateriality and transparency of the monochrome paintings to the rhythmic sign of the drawings on paper, and through to the installations, with which he sets up a direct dialogue between space and material.
“For a while now I’ve been cultivating the habit of giving a form also to the most abstract of thoughts. Those which are nothing more than an initial formless idea, to which I at least attribute a colour. It is a spontaneous and perhaps naturally cultivated movement, but this generates dozens of colours, forms and signs that flow around in my thoughts at the same time. From the less defined forms to the full-scale projects, this vortex of emanated pieces moves, uncombed, around my bald head. The best ones, perhaps the weightiest, land somewhere close by, on the first surface they happen across. Often onto paper. A mass in a disorder of appearance moves around in a disoriented fashion in that phase of chaotic liberty until it is grasped by the expository contingency when it then has to be represented.
This direct level of flow, in which the idea prevails over the realization, the cultivation of a certain independence over the opportunistic structure, and a certain rawness with respect to the finished package, multiplies the possibilities rather than the necessities.
I am allowing to blow around, “inside” and “outside”, all the thoughts in the form of colour or of sign that position themselves, from one moment to the next and with new and previously unseen hierarchies, pretty much everywhere, even if they privilege sheets of paper and books full of blank or already marked pages. These communities of pages are suited to hosting centrifugal and centripetal thoughts, pieces of paper of all types, shapes and sizes, scraps and off-cuts of other thinking activities. Sheets of paper gathered and stapled together, sitting on tables, in order or in disorder, stuck to the wall, held in place in corners by masking tape or stuck with their backs to the wall so as to kick at the slightest movement of the air, sheets of paper that have ended up on the floor which look at me from below, sheets held down by improvised paper weights or bound together in books. And again, open books and stacked-up books, resting or supporting....
The book as an assemblage of sheets of paper to draw on or gather together and reread in a chronological or casual sequence – this, indirectly, is the subject of the exhibition. The book understood as a city that houses communities of signs and thoughts, a utopic city of drawings that reside as anarchic and self-sufficient citizens. At once a booklet and a passport to freedom for the very signs that are so fond of blowing in minds and in rooms.
The drawing frees itself of the draughtsman, and entrusts itself to the journey as the definitive possibility of existence, and organizes itself in books in order to travel better. Books understood as vehicles, space craft of drawing with heterogeneous crews.
Blow is a movement of the air generated by a draught, a gust of wind, which sends light things like sheets of paper flying, and creates domestic whirlwinds and tornadoes that reposition everything in a new way. Flow is a liquid flux, which is generated when thoughts flow, it is the uninterruptable flow of the mind which requires the skill of the hand in representing those thoughts. Raw is the raw flavour of that movement of thought that generates off-cuts of pure signs destined to be primary material, ancient and necessary. These three onomatopoeic terms of global import are the archetype of the organic action that generates the metaphysics of our lives, from the lightest things to the heaviest and most present ones.
This show will be decided in the moment in which all the fluttering pieces of paper come to rest, momentarily, in the available spaces.”
Luca Pancrazzi
Luca Pancrazzi was born in Figline Valdarno (Florence) in 1961. He divides his time between Milan and Tuscany. In his artistic career to date, Pancrazzi has used expressive media that range from painting to video, sound, sculpture and large installation pieces. The central theme of his work is the artistic process and the deconstruction of reality through the gaze. The crossing of the boundary between inside and outside, the staggering of time and perception, continual gaps and serial variations – these are the elements used by the artist in his explorations. His observation of reality, his almost anthropological investigation of the landscape is never rendered in an objective and documentary way, but is always mediated and reworked through other languages, filtered by memory, and finally interiorized. What results is an acute sensitivity for issues relating to the vision, construction, reproduction and transmission of images, and likewise for the perception and definition of spatial and temporal coordinates in contemporary reality. A non-narration that revolves around the concepts of centre and periphery, and the relations created between the definition of the urban landscape and processes of perception of individuality. Luca Pancrazzi has shown his work extensively both in Italy and abroad.
Recent shows include PastPresentFuture – Highlights from the UniCredit Group Collection, Yapı Kredi Cultural Centre, Istanbul, Turkey (2010); STILL IMAGE, Contemporary Italian Painting, Galleria Continua, Beijing, China (2010); Made in Filanda, La Filanda, Pieve a Presciano (2010); Sphères 3 2010, Galleria Continua / Le Moulin, Boissy-le-Chatel, France (2010); La scultura Italiana del XXI secolo, Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Milan (2010); Glass Stress, Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti – Palazzo Franchetti, Venice (2009); Collectors' Choice I + II, ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany (2009); Sphères, Galleria Continua / Le Moulin, Boissy-le-Châtel, France (2008); 15° Quadriennale d’arte di Roma, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, (2008); Focus on Contemporary Italian Art, permanent collection, MAMbo, Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna (2008); Aktuelle Positionen italienischer Kunst, Landesmuseum Joanneum Künstlerhaus Graz, Germany (2008); Fragile Beauty, glass in the focus of art, Stiftung Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf, Germany (2008); La città che sale. We try to build the future, Arcos, Benevento; MACRO, Rome (2007); Expérience Pommery, Domaine Pommery, Reims, France (2007); Camera con vista, Palazzo Reale, Milan (2007); COLLEZIONISMI, il mondo come voluttà e simulazione, Assab One, Milan (2007); 1:1, II Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Special Guest, Moscow, Russia (2007).