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20/7/2002

Mimmo Roselli

Heidelberger Kunstverein, Heidelberg

In Zusammenarbeit, with Museo Pecci di Prato, Comune di Bergamo, Assessorato alla Cultura, Accademia Carrara and Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea


On the Nature of the Line
An Essay on Mimmo Roselli’s “Cosmogonia”


(…)
It is time to speak of Mimmo Roselli. His expertise is the line – both medium and topic, form and content, and this in a comprehensive sense, one that unites opposites: in a radical reduction, on the one hand, that never allows the individual line to dissolve completely within a context, descriptive or otherwise, and in that range of references, on the other, that was alluded to at the beginning of this article. Roselli’s lines are delineations and separatiions, connections and vibrations, traces of controlled vitality, planned and spontaneous, constructive and seismographic, indications of both states of being and surroundings. They are sectional view and plan view, contour and path, encounter and separation, stratification and radiation.

They concretely manifest as drawing and as painting, on paper and on canvas, but also as sculpture, an incision into the painting ground or a groove in the stone, and, finally, as drawing in space that relates and connects architectural points to and with one another by means of a shining steel cable, against the backdrop of the sky, comparable to those imaginary lines out of which, transcending abysses of space and time, we create images of orientation and fantasy, constellations where fixed stars mutate to fixed points of cosmic myths. And in fact, “Cosmogonia” is the name he gives them – Mimmo Roselli, the physician who has learned to make quick and precise incisions with the knife, healing interventions, and whose artistic activities in the Brazilian favelas are devoted to creating relationships, to showing paths, or possibilities for new orientations and communication.

Thus, in Roselli’s work, abstraction joins with concretion, aesthetics, with ethics. To him, formal aspects are not an end in themselves, but a metaphor. His project “Cosmogonia – a possible approach to III millennium” describes, with the means and in the image of the line, ways into a new millennium, ways that, for Roselli, involve the search for a new system of values that is lighter, more transparent, less aggressive than the ones he has held up until now, “with much more empty space and more silence, the better to be able to hear the possible dialogue between ethics and aesthetics”. This concept does not contradict the fact that the political events of the newly launched millennium can be interpreted to some extent as a step backwards to circumstances and ways of thinking previously thought to have been surmounted at least in part; rather – perhaps such painful labor pains are unavoidable – it makes the need for a change in our thinking all the more clear.
(…)
It is the nature of the line to separate, to delimit, to clarify, to define, but also to connect. “On site”, the claim to a “dialogue between ethics and aesthetics” takes concrete shape. It is part of the exhibition concept that there will be not only three different outside works, but also three fundamentally different exhibitions – using the same material. You might consider following the exhibition to its various locations; and Bergamo and Prato are definitely worth a trip. Part of our joint project are the lines that now connect Prato, Bergamo, and Heidelberg.
Heidelberg, May 2002
Hans Gercke

Heidelberger Kunstverein
Hauptstrasse 97 69117 Heidelberg

Opening h 11

stampa

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