A group show exploring the use of text and the written word in the practice of major Post-War Italian artists including, Vincenzo Agnetti (1926-1981), Alighiero Boetti (1940-1994), Dadamaino (1930-2004), Lucio Fontana (1899-1968), Emilio Isgrò (b. 1937), Piero Manzoni (1933-1963), Gastone Novelli (1925-1968), Mimmo Rotella (1918-2006), Salvo (1947-2015) and Mario Schifano (1934-1998), alongside key international artists including Cy Twombly (1928-2011), Joseph Kosuth (b. 1945), Jannis Kounellis (1936-2017), Mel Bochner (b.1940), John Baldessari (b.1931) and Tracey Emin (b.1963). Focusing on creative output from 1958 onwards, the show will feature over 30 works in various media including painting, photography, collage and neon.
The word represents an essential expressive vehicle: words or letters are an integral part of the apparatus of contemporary art, although the practice has its origins in antiquity and took on particular importance in the historic twentieth-century avant-garde movements. Within the broad and complex system of verbal-visual research, which comprises more circumscribed areas of investigation such as concrete poetry, visual poetry and narrative art, the experience that has expanded its horizons furthest has without doubt been that of Conceptual Art. The artists included in the exhibition are brought together by certain key concerns – concept – light – dictionary – pop – time – philosophy – which allow us to identify affinities, following the fil rouge that unites them. Drawing on life and the kaleidoscope of verbal, literary, philosophical and poetic communication, each artist has succeeded in conferring upon the word a power that goes beyond mere meaning: more than words!
| Duration | 23 February 2018 - 12 May 2018 |
| Times | Monday – Friday: 10 am – 6 pm Saturday: 11 am – 5 pm |
| Cost | Free |
| Venue | Mazzoleni |
| Address | 15 Old Bond Street, London, W1S 4AX |
| Contact | 442074958805 / london@mazzoleniart.com / www.mazzoleniart.com |