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5/9/2012

Time, after time

Ronchini Gallery, London

The exhibition will explore similarities between generations of artists by featuring contemporary American artists Sam Falls, Andrew Brischler, David Mramor, Davina Semo and Rebecca Ward along side Italian artists from the 1950s, 60s and 70s, including Michelangelo Pistoletto, Alighiero Boetti, Alberto Burri, Dadamaino, Piero Dorazio, Mario Schifano and Paolo Scheggi.

Many young American artists working today have been influenced by Italian artistic research of the mid-20th century. Through the use of simple and artisan materials in their compositions, they directly or indirectly reference Arte Povera, a movement that emerged in Italy in the 1960s. It came out of the decline of abstract painting in the late 1950s and the rise of older avant-garde approaches to making art. The period of liberation in Italy after World War II allowed artists a renewed freedom artistically. Artists such as Piero Dorazio formed Forma 1, a group in Rome dedicated to pushing forward abstract art, paving the way for future progressive movements.

Artist, curator and contributor to the exhibition catalogue Marilyn Minter explains; ‘This new kind of abstraction is part of a collective unconscious, that these artists all somehow belong to this same school of thought. This generation -painters in their mid to late 20s- are all looking back to the past, to people like Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni, Mary Heilmann, Blinky Palermo and Cy Twombly, it's like they are all absorbing traditions of abstract expressionism, minimalism, arte povera, and pop culture and simultaneously challenging them and writing sort of love letters to them.’

Curators Carlo Berardi and Jason Lee of ARTNESIA developed the concept of the exhibition from a quote Alighiero Boetti cited on The Hour Glass, a collage work from 1979: ‘ vice versa, a word between a circle and an hourglass.’ Boetti was expressing the relationship between the passing of time and the geometrical form of a circle. By going the other way around, one tends to return to something that has already partially occurred and gets the chance to develop it.

The young American artists in the exhibition have recently gained wider recognition in the US - Andrew Brischler, David Mramor and Rebecca Ward recently exhibited in The Virgins, the inaugural show at Maurizio Cattelan and Massimiliano Gioni’s new gallery Family Business in New York- however this will be the first time the UK public can view their work. Andrew Brischler's (b. 1987, Long Island, NY) paintings take their titles from popular culture and music. He leaves the canvas on the floor of his studio, to take in all the dirt of the natural environment, and then transforms it into a ‘polished’ object via quick pictorial gestures. In his work, the histories of minimalism, abstract expressionism and Arte Povera are sampled and mashed up into paintings that challenge art history as much as embrace it.

Sam Falls' (b. 1984, San Diego, CA) latest series of works features the use of garden lattice placed on wooden boards and left in the sun to create a grid on the surface. The sun creates the composition in a very similar manner to the ideas behind the Reticoli (1959-1963) series of Piero Dorazio (1927-2005) whose research aimed at creating a new form of painting using colour and light.

David Mramor (b. 1984, Cleveland, Ohio) works with deconstructing images, simplifying surfaces into colour and form. He works with basic ideas, photographs or memories such as flowers from his mother's garden or retro American pop stars. These images are digitally manipulated and become the surfaces for his paintings. The only evidence of the original image is in the title of the works. He places gestures, collages materials, draws and tapes on top of the photographic images; the original images thus become open to interpretation, non-objectivity and abstraction. In Bleeding Heart, we find strong parallels with the works of Mario Schifano (1934-1998) whose series of Televisioni, started in the 1970s, featured over painted TV-stills.

Davina Semo’s (b. 1981, Washington, DC) works reference a post-industrial world that is disquieting yet incontrovertible. Using materials such as one-way mirrors, chains, safety glass, reinforced concrete and spray paint, her sculptures offer, as the critic Bob Nickas has pointed out, ‘a distanced and implied violence’, whilst also being ‘capable of pure poetic gesture.’

Rebecca Ward (b. 1984, Waco, TX) works with tape installations whose primary concerns are colour and space. Tape adheres to the gallery's ceilings, walls and floors converging with the architecture. This perceptual play of colour, texture and light is set into motion by the viewer's interaction with the work. Her paintings are a result of everyday questioning and experimentation within the studio. In Sister Wives, a strong relationship exists with the work of Dadamaino (1935-2004). Dadamaino's constant repetition of signs is here paired with Ward's pulling of vertical threads from a blank found canvas. In Eyes of Texas, the use of found burlap is reminiscent of the work of Alberto Burri (1915-1995).

About the curators
ARTNESIA is an arts projects initiative set up in 2010 by Jason Lee and Carlo Berardi. Its main activities are curatorial projects around the globe, artists’ residencies and representations as well as book publishing. Artnesia’s activities started with Heavenly Creatures, a group exhibition in partnership with Jack Wills at the Aubin Gallery, followed by Confessions of Dangerous Minds, a comprehensive survey of Contemporary Art from Turkey at Saatchi Gallery, London, in 2011.

Jason Lee is a collector and curator with expertise in Middle Eastern and Asian contemporary works. He has established a reputation as a trusted expert in the field, fostering many new artists and promoting their work in the West. He was at the forefront of the surge of interest in Chinese contemporary art and has recently concentrated his work on emerging artists in both Turkey and Iran. Not restricted to the Middle East, Jason’s interests cover the whole of the contemporary art movement with particular attention to emerging artists.

Carlo Berardi has extensive experience in emerging art markets and co-curated Conference of the Birds, an exhibition of Iranian Modern and Contemporary Art in London in 2008 as well as the first solo show in the UK by the Lebanese artist Zena El Khalil. He was the nominator for the winning artist of the Magic of Persia Contemporary Art Prize in 2009: Mahmoud Bakhshi. He is a board member of the Foundation Museo Pino Pascali in Bari, Italy, where he curated a solo show of Jake and Dinos Chapman for the Pino Pascali Prize 2010 as well as an exhibition by Jan Fabre. Carlo has extensive knowledge of Post-War Italian art due to the history of his family’s collecting background.

About Ronchini Gallery
Ronchini Gallery is a contemporary art gallery founded by Lorenzo Ronchini in 1992, in Umbria, Italy, which expanded in February 2012 with a space in Mayfair, London. Its exhibitions have explored pioneering movements within Italy; the gallery aesthetic is defined by Minimalism, Spatialism, Conceptualism and Arte Povera and it retains an unblinking future-focus on progressive movements.

Ronchini Gallery evolved from 20 years of private collecting. Paterfamilias Adriano Ronchini was an early supporter of artists such as Alighiero Boetti, Daniel Buren, Joseph Kosuth, Frank Stella and Michelangelo Pistoletto and collected their work throughout the seventies. Subscribing to the highest standards of curatorship and scholarship, the gallery provides a rigorous context in which its artists can be viewed. Ronchini Gallery also maintains a successful publishing arm which produces exhibition catalogues, monographs, critical texts and artist’s books.

For press information and images please contact: Sophie da Gama Campos or Toby Kidd at JB Pelham PR, tel: +44 (0) 208 969 3959, sophie@jbpelhampr.com or toby@jbpelhampr.com

Preview: 5 September 2012, 6- 8pm

Ronchini Gallery
22 Dering Street, London
Opening Hours: Monday - Saturday 10am-6pm
Admission free

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