CLAUDIO PARMIGGIANI
2015-08-10At the centre of the exhibition is an assemblage of plaster heads, installed like a mass of remains on the gallery floor. In this work, Parmiggiani engages with classical iconography and fragments of antiquity, using the figures and motifs of an imaginary archaeology to rewrite and evoke the effect of ancient ruins. Another new work consists of paper painted with the constellation of the stars and pierced with a burn. Its materials are charred but memories of their presence remain. Moving between homage, transgression and estrangement, the echo of the ancient world is charged with mystery as the artist gives form to ephemeral notions of time, silence, memory, absence and dreams through sculptural installations, paintings and Delocazioni that resonate with imaginative tension.
Using relics, fire, ashes, pigment, dust, shadow, Parmiggiani’s work is exquisitely and brutally material but retains the longing for a transcendent dimension, a desire to render infinities, abstractions and what is burrowed in the world but nameless and without noise. First exhibited in 1970, Parmiggiani’s iconic Delocazioni use powder, smoke and fire to make shadows and imprints on paper and board. In order to create his Delocazioni, Parmiggiani builds an installation and sets it on fire through the combustion of tyres. When the objects are removed, what remains are their negative outlines in soot, revealing their trace and memory, silhouettes immortalised using smoke. In this landscape of shadows and light, bodies and objects, the whole universe of life is evoked in absentia.
Opposite – Untitled, 2013-2015
Exhibition runs through to August 29th, 2015
Simon Lee Gallery
304, 3F The Pedder Building
12 Pedder Street, Central
Hong Kong
China
