Press release – Franco Mazzucchelli: Stati di pressione (curated by Andrea Fiore)

September 19th – November 4th, 2013

Start: September 19th, h. 6.30 pm

Monopoli Gallery is pleased to present: Stati di pressione, a personal exhibition of Franco Mazzucchelli (Milan 1939) curated by Andrea Fiore. This exhibition explores the artist's career from his early experiences of art as social participation (Alfa Romeo 1971- Volterra 1973), till the most recent works.

The exhibition begins with some historical works concerning urban interventions made at the gates of the Alfa Romeo factory in January 1971. These are decorative inflatables marked as A.TO A. (Art to Abandon), works that were made to be abandoned in public places. A project through which you felt «the need for art to come out from the temples of knowledge, to give and to discover new dimensions, new languages» (M. Pugliese). That of 1971 is an important experiment on Relational art or Relational aesthetics, which placed the artistic intervention in a clear relationship with a heterogeneous and improvised audience, bringing this combination to unexpected results.

There’s also a selection of works from the Mazzucchelli’s exhibition Caduta di pressione (1972), held at the gallery Il Diagramma in Milan, and especially for Volterra 73 , a famous event edited by Enrico Crispolti that saw some of the major protagonists of Italian art of those years, trying to achieve an intimate dialogue between the landscape, the people and the new artistic trends.

A big yellow cone and other decorative inflatables invaded the historical centre of Volterra, by creating a unique comparison between the solemn medieval architecture of Piazza dei Priori and the large structures in PVC; «looks like a game, a game that brings together old and young people, the rediscovery of a natural rhythm, the unusual harmony of body movements [...] maybe it will be difficult hereafter to set up an art exhibition like this in any historical centre, disregarding the experience of Volterra» (from the documentary: Art For the City). Volterra 73 had a natural continuation in the Italian section of the Venice Biennale of 1976, dedicated to Environment as a social fact, and attended by Mazzucchelli.
In addition to the original decorative inflatables of those years, in the exhibition there are also photographs of Enrico Cattaneo documenting the interaction between the people and this kind of works.

The exhibition continues with the latest works by Mazzucchelli, ironically called Bieca decorazione by the author BD. «Mazzucchelli has traced the small size of the picture as the culmination of years of research between art and technology, and reworked with new results, an extensive experience in the analytical system of forms [...] each painting, as it was for the large inflatable sculptures, follows the undulating rhythm of volumes, exhibits a system of relationships and correspondences between the welding lines and develops the wide extent of surface through the contamination and the exchange of polychrome reports» (A. Del Guercio).

Stati di Pressione is a tribute to the artistic career of one of the leaders and pioneers of art as social participation.