Material Life
Material life ● New notes on the Verzocchi Collection
Works by Riccardo Baruzzi, Federico Pietrella, Davide Rivalta, Antonio Rovaldi
Curator: Davide Ferri
Revolving around the subject of work, the Verzocchi Collection sketches a coherent history of Italian post-WWII painting. It offers a portrait of Italy as it was soon after the war – a rural country, with few cities and largely under (re)construction.
The third chapter of a reflection on the Verzocchi Collection that started two years ago within Ipercorpo, Material life investigates the representation of work in our age by looking at the filigrees running through the collection, capturing their narrative potential. After more than 50 years, what kind of work emerges from the paintings collected by Verzocchi? Would it be possible, or worthwhile, to expand the collection after such a long time lapse? And what would happen if that lapse were translated into images?
Material life exhibits recent work by four Italian artists (Riccardo Baruzzi, Federico Pietrella, Davide Rivalta and Antonio Rovaldi) who draw inspiration from the kind of material, manual work depicted in most of the Verzocchi Collection – ploughing the fields, building brick walls, crafting objects or working at one’s art in the studio. Just as in the 1940s and 1950s work was mainly depicted as hands and bodies in action, as daily practice and physical exercise, Antonio Rovaldi’s videos show painting or sculpting hands at work, hands that touch, shape, mould. Davide Rivalta’s sculpts large animals with vibrant, contrasted surfaces that force the visitor to reinterpret the spaces they inhabit. Federico Pietrella’s paintings, made with a common office stamp, literally bear the mark of a manual skill that turns the pictures into a narration of the time spent at one’s workplace. Riccardo Baruzzi’s performance resounds with the noise of art making, of the kind that fills the artist’s studio, recounting the painting process as a music score.
Material life has four different locations that make up a single coherent route – the Fabbrica delle Candele, where Ipercorpo performances will also be on show; the San Domenico Musem; the Marcolini Gallery, a new space for contemporary art in Forlì; and Palazzo Romagnoli, home to the Verzocchi Collection.
On Sunday 31 / 05 afternoon, at 4:30 PM, the four artists on show will take part in a round table that will focus on the Verzocchi Collection but also on artists’ practices and on contemporary art issues such as balancing between studio and post studio practices, between the artist as a crafter and as a Duchamp-like myth.
