{"id":111599,"date":"2021-10-19T09:43:37","date_gmt":"2021-10-19T07:43:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/?p=111599"},"modified":"2021-10-20T08:11:25","modified_gmt":"2021-10-20T06:11:25","slug":"enrico-castellani-surfaces-and-foundations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/2021\/10\/19\/enrico-castellani-surfaces-and-foundations\/","title":{"rendered":"Enrico Castellani, surfaces and foundations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Castellani\u2019s artwork is not something to be discovered; instead, it expands. If Heraclitus already testified that \u00abthe nature of things loves to hide\u00bb, and if, to this day, cosmologists consider energy and matter obscure<\/em>, it would be convenient to update languages according to nature. An ode to the light produced by the artist won\u2019t suffice to see this straight. O light of art, so rare, clear up the subtle steps of the waves and particles that, through inflections and reliefs, douse the beauty of your surfaces!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It won\u2019t be the well-known Superfici<\/em>, volumes built by many shafts, currently keeping sculptures and \u201csituations\u201d of semiotic events on the sidelines, to dominate stages and parterres. Aren\u2019t their wooden beams and tumulus- or valve-like membranes rising to tell us that Spartito<\/em> rules each side \u2013 the fight and the partition, the below and the above \u2013 for better or worse? These are parts of ongoing relations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

E.Castellani_1984\nEnrico Castellani, Celleno (Viterbo), 1984. Ph: Nataly Maier, courtesy Fondazione Enrico Castellani.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

According to specific iconological foundations Castellani shares the duality of internal surfaces and\/or voids \u2013 the violin of his prestige. Such extro- and introflexed bodies, for it seems one could touch and make them resonate with one\u2019s eyes, become tools of haptic<\/em> observation; devoid of frames, they open up space and energy fields. Like steps on the moon, closed surfaces communicate with open foundations. Surfaces radiate brighter when enlivened by cavities and depths that sensitize them: such was young Enrico\u2019s trump card. His art expands in each single dark-bodied surface, between sculptures, environments, events, and lesser-known refined digressions. Passers-by happen to dispute on the \u201cdifferent repetition\u201d that, if the white Superfici<\/em> were stripped of their frames, could only differentiate them poorly: but they create a language. Perhaps a quantization of the infinitesimally small? Although I\u2019m no mathematical physicist, I wish I could understand it too. No \u2013 the oeuvre of Castellani is as quantistic as the image described by those experts that speak of Hartle-Hawking\u2019s no-boundary universe proposal, that is, pertaining to the invisible or the infinite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Nobel Prize awarded to Giorgio Parisi for his discovery of the interplay between disorder and fluctuations in physical systems, from atomic to planetary scales \u2013 be it atoms, planets, bird flight patters \u2013 shines a light on this exhibition\u2019s combination of Castellani\u2019s sculptures<\/em> and surfaces<\/em>, structures which, to most, evoke streams of chaos. Today, chaos is translated by maths and induced by poetry. Trained as an artist, Castellani once received a text by poet Mario Luzi, which was originally published in his collection Su fondamenti invisibili (1971). \u00abCastellani\u2019s tabula<\/em> could be the origin as well as the epilogue of creation\u00bb, Luzi warned us, understanding the opposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Castellani, a theoretical and experimental artist, is complex in himself. Just like his machinae<\/em>, gathered together by Loom Gallery, brought to tension through beams and tensors, displayed in pairs and at the centre!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00abArt searches for the universal through a detailed examination of particulars, which often requires an artificially limited scenario in order to be fruitful\u00bb. (Lee Smolin, 2014)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Enrico Castellani, Sculture, 1999, exhibition view, Galleria Civica, Trento, 1999. Ph: Giuseppe Varchetta, courtesy Fondazione Enrico Castellani.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

No quantum of supremacy<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A philosopher who curated a major art exhibition in 2013 declared: \u00abPainting has won\u00bb. Won? For Castellani\u2019s never-suprematist surfaces, it had been true since his experimental and theoretical debut in 1959, when he had his first shows, having been selected by two of Milan\u2019s most cutting-edge galleries, Schwarz and Ariete. Now Bernard-Henri L\u00e9vy aims at a genetic autonomy of language \u2013 heading towards the automation of visual arts?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00abPainting has won. It is autonomous.\u00bb As in Lacan\u2019s psychoanalysis, by now, painting authorizes itself. Indifferent to its own narration, like Bataille said of Manet, painting becomes its \u201conly object\u201d, rejecting \u201cany will that is external to painting\u201d, as Malraux commented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2013, Castellani exhibited the bi-angular Superficie argento \u2013 a winged plane with deflected edges, so to speak \u2013 upon L\u00e9vy\u2019s invitation at Saint-Paul-de-Vence\u2019s Fondation Maeght, a charismatic habitat for the history of modernist avant-gardes. Like Malraux did years before, L\u00e9vy gathered a large amount of antique and non-antique works, in a r\u00e9cit<\/em> made of painting, philosophy and adventures of truth. How do the hundred works move in there?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00abHaving broken all moorings to the harbor of Being, these works are like Annunciations to a self-referential world that doesn\u2019t refer to anything but itself, an absolute object, hard as stone and free of hidden implications, products of an obscure discourse that is no longer the one philosophers used to fathom.\u00bb<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless\u2026……………………………………………..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00ab\u2026 ascetic and voluptuous\u2026 a sensual platonism\u2026 that endows his undertakings with something hieratic, puritanical, that unites, whatever it is, the ancient willingness to break free from the image.\u00bb<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026………………….<\/p>\n\n\n\n

………………………………………………….<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sculpting the pose of spacetime in a lagoon<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026…………..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Editor’s note: this writing introduces \u201cEnrico Castellani – Le Superfici e i Fondamenti\u201d, an exhibition presented by LOOM Gallery<\/a> and Fondazione Enrico Castellani<\/a><\/em> (Loom Gallery, Milano, from 28th Oct to 31st Dec 2021). The show includes two large white triangular canvases and two massive wooden sculptures made from square beams stabilized by steel stays and rigging attached to small mooring posts. This body of works was made for the artist’ solo show at Galleria Civica in Trento in 1999, and they have not been presented together since.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LOOM gallery and Fondazione Enrico Castellani re-enact the 1999 solo exhibition at Galleria Civica di Trento<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111607,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2385],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-art-history"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}