Massimo Grimaldi
dal 26/9/2005 al 22/10/2005
Segnalato da
26/9/2005
Massimo Grimaldi
Isabella Bortolozzi Galerie, Berlin
How can an artwork of a distinctly formalist character, communicate reflections on socio-political issues? Can this language operate as a polemic directed at today's society, at our function of spectator and citizens, and at the mechanisms of desire and seduction? Can these speculations be combined with an emotional approach to reality? The artist attempts to respond to these questions in his practice.
Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi is very pleased to show the first
solo-exhibition of Massimo Grimaldi in Germany.
How can an artwork of a distinctly formalist character, communicate
reflections on socio-political issues? Can this language operate as a
polemic directed at today's society, at our function of spectator and
citizens, and at the mechanisms of desire and seduction? Can these
speculations be combined with an emotional approach to reality?
Massimo Grimaldi attempts to respond to these questions in his
practice; he employs a large variety of formal languages, engaging in a
critical conceptual exploration of the artist as role model and his
status within society. His work is comprised of photography (frequently
consisting of digitally processed images that are generated from
stereotypical depictions of nature, which the artist finds in magazines
or archives), rendered/digital concepts (often permitting for several
versions of formal realization), sculpture (base plastic materials are
transformed into delicately lithe and elegant objects), pencil drawings
(contained in 'minimalist' plastic boxes that can function as
small-scale showrooms), text-murals (mostly controversial statements on
the artist as role model and art's general function in society). All
these works create the sense of a remarkably cool and detached air that
seems to express a virtual emptiness and banality. While Grimaldi's
work refers to an ultra-modern, futurist design aesthetic through the
use of gleaming, pristine surfaces with fluid, translucent shapes, it
actually conveys a strong emotional charge, one which bears the weight
of a discrete, yet persistent desire.
This feeling owes itself to a dichotomy: the diligent, passionate,
devoted allegiance to an idea or emotion on the one hand while on the
other, the self-conscious acknowledgement of the transience and
obsolescence that awaits any of these convictions as an inevitable
result of the contaminating forces of time and fashion.
Grimaldi maintains a seemingly absolute distance and confines the work
to minimal forms which pretend to affirm an ideal of almost clinical,
intangible beauty, while he examines the relationships humans have to
objects. The artist employs the mechanisms of seduction that inform our
lives as consumers, as much as he explores our ambivalence to the
violence in entertainment (e.g. his work that presents dramatic images
from recent news reports, in a slide show projected onto the latest
model of an Apple computer).
Alessandro Rabottini writes in the catalogue for the exhibition Dojo,
"Grimaldi stages a kind of archeology of desires in the act of
becoming." By anticipating the moment of defeat and grief, Grimaldi
makes us rethink the transitory nature of fashion, emotion, and the
ideas we adhere so strongly to. The act of feeling and the act of
betraying this feeling become muddled.
The analytical coolness assumed by Grimaldi's aesthetic is bound to his
omnipresent emotionality, it is in this uncommon alliance that the
artist's theme is reflected: the degradation of feelings and the
melancholy that taint personal and societal relations – affiliations
which have been chilled by reality or removed into the realm of
stereotypical fantasies. The seemingly detached air of this artwork
corresponds to the "natural" as much as the social landscape, one that
can hardly be perceived directly anymore, because our understanding of
the real increasingly refers to its mediated and filtered
representations. Failure is already manifested in the primary
appearance of what we have anticipated to be perfection.
Text: Luca Cerizza
Massimo Grimaldi born in 1974 in Taranto, Italy, lives and works in
Milan, Italy.
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Solo exhibitions:
2005
Isabella Bortolozzi Galerie, Berlin
2004
Massimo Grimaldi Solo Exhibition, Zero…, Milan
2002
Zero…, Piacenza
Group exhibitions:
2005
Dojo, Ex Faema, Milan
No Manifesto, Gamec, Bergamo
Take It Furthur!, Andrew Mummery Gallery, London
2004
Prisma, Galerie Martin Janda, Wien
Paradiso e Inferno, Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice
2003
Fame, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice
Delays and Revolutions, 50th International Art Exhibition of La
Biennale di Venezia, Venice
Defrag, Suite 106, New York
Great Expectations!, Ferrotel, Pescara
2002
Assab One, Ex GEA, Milan
ExIt, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin
2001
Playmakers, Ex Manifattura Tabacchi, Florence
The Sun and the Rainfall, Zero…, Piacenza
2000
Emporio, Viafarini, Milan
Curatorial projects:
2004
Double, Zero..., Milan
Selected bibliography:
2005
Dojo, catalogue of the exibition
No Manifesto, catalogue of the exibition
Skin and Concrete, Alessandro Rabottini, ArtReview, n° 5
2004
Sguardi sul Presente, Emanuela De Cecco, Flash Art Italia, n° 245
Paradiso e Inferno, catalogue of the exhibition
2003
Fame, edited by Chiara Bertola, catalogue of the exhibition
Massimo Grimaldi, Gyonata Bonvicini, Flash Art Italia, n° 240
Dreams and Conflicts: The Dictatorship of the Viewer, catalogue of the
50th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia
Delays and Revolutions, Thomas Wulffen, Kunstforum, n° 166
2002
Massimo Grimaldi, in Critics’ Picks, Luca Cerizza, www.artforum.com
ExIt, edited by Francesco Bonami, Mondadori
Reception: September 27th, 2005, from 7pm
Isabella Bortolozzi Galerie
Schillingstrasse 31 / 10179 Berlin
Opening hours: Tuesday - Saturday 12 – 6pm