ValerioADAMI
Gli Abitanti del Museo n. 1 Valerio Adami dalla “Figuration Narrative Paris 1960-1972”
09.2009–11.2009
Gli Abitanti del Museo n. 1 Valerio Adami dalla “Figuration Narrative Paris 1960-1972”
09.2009–11.2009
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Valerio Adami, Gli Abitanti del Museo n. 1, Installation view, Fondazione Marconi, Milan, 2009
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Valerio Adami
H. Matisse che lavora a un carnet de dessins, 1966
Acrylic on canvas
200 x 300 cm
H. Matisse che lavora a un carnet de dessins, 1966
Acrylic on canvas
200 x 300 cm
Press Release
Gli Abitanti del Museo n. 1: Valerio Adami
Dalla “Figuration Narrative Paris 1960-1972”
Opening: September 17, 2009
September 18 – November 7, 2009
Dalla “Figuration Narrative Paris 1960-1972”
Opening: September 17, 2009
September 18 – November 7, 2009
The Marconi Foundation is pleased to present the first exhibition from a new series titled, Gli Abitanti del Museo, that Giorgio Marconi has organized in order to thoroughly examine and revise his fourty-years activity at Studio Marconi (1965-1992).
A reinterpretation of the works and of the critical texts of then and now has led to a series of exhibitions and publications from 2004, opening year of the Marconi Foundation, up to our days, with regard to artists such as Schifano, Baj, Pardi, Spoldi, Tadini, Hsiao e Del Pezzo.
This new exhibition series, Gli Abitanti del Museo, aims at being more specific and "provocative" starting from the analysis of works that have been displayed in museums.
The first is dedicated to Valerio Adami's L'uovo rotto (1964) and H. Matisse che lavora ad un quaderno di disegni (1966) presented at the exhibition Figuration Narrative Paris 1960-1972, organised by the Réunion des musées nationaux-Centre Pompidou at the Grand Palais, Paris (16/4-13/7/2008) and at the IVAM, Valencia (19/9/2008-11/1/2009).
When pop art triumphed with Robert Rauschenberg being awarded the Venice Biennial prize in July 1964, the exhibition Mythologies quotidiennes opened at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Curated by Gérald Gassiot-Talabot, it presented the new figurative painting that was emerging from the banks of the Seine.
Painters from different places and aesthetic horizons like Adami, Arroyo, Bertholo, Bertini, Falhström, Klasen, Monroy, Rancillac, Recalcati, Saul, Télémaque and Voss, were starting from photographs or movie images, advertising icons, comics or classical painting in order to realise works that could reveil unexpected meanings, suggest new narrations or show their political engagement.
In 1966 Alain Jouffroy wrote about Valerio Adami: "...From the first day we met seven years ago, from the moment I saw him conceive his paintings starting from a photograph of an event borrowed from the printed news media, from the first moment in which I grasped that he took from the 'present' and saw it as material to transform, cut, slice up, recompose, I realised that he was indeed a great painter: not a painter of the immediate, of actuality, but a painter who lucidly attempts to dominate and even unravel actuality, or, better, to 'break it into smithereens'. Adami has never yielded to the reactionary temptation of 'realism'. He has never ceded to the need to integrate the individual’s thought with the industrial or dogmatic thought.
A reinterpretation of the works and of the critical texts of then and now has led to a series of exhibitions and publications from 2004, opening year of the Marconi Foundation, up to our days, with regard to artists such as Schifano, Baj, Pardi, Spoldi, Tadini, Hsiao e Del Pezzo.
This new exhibition series, Gli Abitanti del Museo, aims at being more specific and "provocative" starting from the analysis of works that have been displayed in museums.
The first is dedicated to Valerio Adami's L'uovo rotto (1964) and H. Matisse che lavora ad un quaderno di disegni (1966) presented at the exhibition Figuration Narrative Paris 1960-1972, organised by the Réunion des musées nationaux-Centre Pompidou at the Grand Palais, Paris (16/4-13/7/2008) and at the IVAM, Valencia (19/9/2008-11/1/2009).
When pop art triumphed with Robert Rauschenberg being awarded the Venice Biennial prize in July 1964, the exhibition Mythologies quotidiennes opened at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Curated by Gérald Gassiot-Talabot, it presented the new figurative painting that was emerging from the banks of the Seine.
Painters from different places and aesthetic horizons like Adami, Arroyo, Bertholo, Bertini, Falhström, Klasen, Monroy, Rancillac, Recalcati, Saul, Télémaque and Voss, were starting from photographs or movie images, advertising icons, comics or classical painting in order to realise works that could reveil unexpected meanings, suggest new narrations or show their political engagement.
In 1966 Alain Jouffroy wrote about Valerio Adami: "...From the first day we met seven years ago, from the moment I saw him conceive his paintings starting from a photograph of an event borrowed from the printed news media, from the first moment in which I grasped that he took from the 'present' and saw it as material to transform, cut, slice up, recompose, I realised that he was indeed a great painter: not a painter of the immediate, of actuality, but a painter who lucidly attempts to dominate and even unravel actuality, or, better, to 'break it into smithereens'. Adami has never yielded to the reactionary temptation of 'realism'. He has never ceded to the need to integrate the individual’s thought with the industrial or dogmatic thought.
Before the photographs in the press, as he did later before the 'comics', Adami has always conserved the creative attitude of the critic. Admittedly, of a poetical, inspired critic, more than that of a chronicler. If at first glance we might interpret some of his paintings as images of contemporary news items, it is because we fail to grasp the personal code that he has projected. Faced with a system of official representations (photographs, comics, etc.), faced with the aggressive collectivisation of images and clichés of 'happiness' and social 'success' that bombard us from all sides, driving into our skulls even, millions of clichéimages, Adami has adopted and devised his pictorial creation as a mental means of transforming the world…
Adami is a great painter not only because he throws back a broken vision our armchairs, bathtubs, hair, and naked women, but also because he considers the world to be like an egg which is breaking, and also sees thought like an egg which is breaking. And if everything is like an egg, this egg must perforce be a broken one…"
Together with L'uovo rotto (oil on canvas, 200x300 cm) and H. Matisse che lavora ad un quaderno di disegni (acrylics on canvas, 200x300 cm), also displayed at the exhibition Figuration Narrative Paris 1960-1972 at Centre Pompidou, at the first floor of the Marconi Foundation, there will be other representative works by Adami from 1964, among which Auto-lavaggio-mentale (oil on canvas 210x335 cm), and a selection of drawings from the same years, while the second floor will host works from 1966 like Fusione di una testa e di una finestra (Omaggio a Boccioni), Privacy, scena borghese una cameriera di buon cuore, some drawings and documents.
The exhibitions from the series, Gli Abitanti del Museo, will be accompanied by I Quaderni della Fondazione Marconi. Taking up the idea of the Studio Marconi's "magazines" published in the Seventies-Eighties, this publication will be aimed at a critical re-reading of the works suggested.
The first issue in the series is dedicated to Valerio Adami's L’Uovo rotto, 1964, and H. Matisse che lavora ad un quaderno di disegni, 1966, which will be accompanied by drawings, documents and texts of that period.
For the occasion, Alain Jouffroy has written a brief commentary on the two works on exhibit.
Adami is a great painter not only because he throws back a broken vision our armchairs, bathtubs, hair, and naked women, but also because he considers the world to be like an egg which is breaking, and also sees thought like an egg which is breaking. And if everything is like an egg, this egg must perforce be a broken one…"
Together with L'uovo rotto (oil on canvas, 200x300 cm) and H. Matisse che lavora ad un quaderno di disegni (acrylics on canvas, 200x300 cm), also displayed at the exhibition Figuration Narrative Paris 1960-1972 at Centre Pompidou, at the first floor of the Marconi Foundation, there will be other representative works by Adami from 1964, among which Auto-lavaggio-mentale (oil on canvas 210x335 cm), and a selection of drawings from the same years, while the second floor will host works from 1966 like Fusione di una testa e di una finestra (Omaggio a Boccioni), Privacy, scena borghese una cameriera di buon cuore, some drawings and documents.
The exhibitions from the series, Gli Abitanti del Museo, will be accompanied by I Quaderni della Fondazione Marconi. Taking up the idea of the Studio Marconi's "magazines" published in the Seventies-Eighties, this publication will be aimed at a critical re-reading of the works suggested.
The first issue in the series is dedicated to Valerio Adami's L’Uovo rotto, 1964, and H. Matisse che lavora ad un quaderno di disegni, 1966, which will be accompanied by drawings, documents and texts of that period.
For the occasion, Alain Jouffroy has written a brief commentary on the two works on exhibit.