Equilibrium. An idea for Italian sculpture

Vincenzo Agnetti, Getulio Alviani, Giovanni Anselmo, Gianni Caravaggio, Alice Cattaneo, Paolo Cotani, Elisabetta Di Maggio, Luciano Fabro, Sergio Limonta, Filippo Manzini, Giuseppe Maraniello, Fausto Melotti, Hidetoshi Nagasawa, Nunzio, Shigeru Saito, Remo Salvadori, Luca Trevisani.

Curated by Giorgio Verzotti

Mazzoleni presents Equilibrium. An idea for Italian sculpture, a group show curated by Giorgio Verzotti. The exhibition will tour from Mazzoleni’s Turin gallery to open in London to the public on February 8, 2019. Equilibrium. An idea for Italian sculpture investigates overcoming the notion of “tutto tondo,” or “in the round,” and examines the artists’ different research where each arrives at their own unique interpretation of equilibrium.

While one area of this investigation can be found in Futurist research, it is in the fil rouge from Fausto Melotti to Luciano Fabro to Hidetoshi Nagasawa through to the younger Gianni Caravaggio, Alice Cattaneo, Sergio Limonta, Filippo Manzini, that we see a clear decision to subtract body from the sculptural work to allow it to interact within the environment where it is displayed; this becomes important, as the interaction modifies the configuration and the perception of the work itself.

The exhibition also focuses on the process “in negative” which arrives at an almost indefinable dimension of work which is suspended and balanced between diverse states: painting, sculpture, relief, installation, and photography or soundscape. This process also can be found in fields other than that of true sculpture, from research in the kinetic field or that of Analytical Painting. The sculpture of Vincenzo Agnetti, Getulio Alviani and Giovanni Anselmo moves in this direction, but different researches find similar outcomes, even in the work of Paolo Cotani, Nunzio, Giuseppe Maraniello to the sculpture by Luca Trevisani and Shigeru Saito, exponents of the latest trends. 

While following different paths, each artist arrives at a condition of equilibrium between the elements that physically make up the work: in this way, the fragility that frequently becomes the common denominator of these strands of research finds a strength capable of conferring stability, exemplified by At still point of turning world, 2016, a delicate work, predominately made of stacked and balanced porcelain by Elisabetta Di Maggio.

On the opposite end, the weight of traditional materials (marble, stone, metals)—adopted for example by Remo Salvadori, finds an effective lightness in the balance between the force and counter-force on which the work is built, at times on truly precarious, changeable and never definitive connections.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue in Italian and English, which includes an essay by Giorgio Verzotti.