Flavio Paolucci
December 10, 2009
– February 27, 2010



Press release
PDF | 49 kB

(Adobe Acrobat Reader needed)

Studio Dabbeni presents a personal exhibition of artist Flavio Paolucci (Torre, Cantone Ticino, 1934).
One image, that he has represented in many of his works, elicits profound fascination in the artist: it is a view of an abandoned house, at the bottom of a valley, in which crumbling ruins and lacerated walls have been overtaken by nature. In one work, shown in the gallery, branches of trees, made from bronze, emerge from top of a small, roofless, ruined house. These are not terrestrial landscapes. They are landscapes of the soul.

Flavio Paolucci
L'ultima luce
2009
cm 187 x 107
Wood, paper, colors e string

Flavio Paolucci
La linea separa le forme
2009
cm 187 x 107
Wood, paper, colors e string

Flavio Paolucci has always had an intimate relationship with nature. Nature prevails over all; the artist believes that “when man abandons, she dominates”. He has chosen his life: to reside in Biasca, in Canton Ticino, rooted to his origins. In a studio located at the foot of a mountain, light penetrates through enormous windows, while the artist works tirelessly at representations of his visions.

Throughout Studio Dabbeni’s spaces his works seem to centre around one nucleus, a work that constitutes the heart of the exhibition that is placed in the main room of the gallery. It is comprised of a bronze tree trunk, massive, knobby and mighty, even if it has almost fallen or been laid on the floor: actually, its uppermost extremity rests on a frame (made of bronze) with both sides of it showing, made from two surfaces reflecting each other. On the floor, in front of each of the mirrors, two delicate leaves (one on each side of the frame) that are also made of bronze, have been placed.

Flavio Paolucci
I fiori spaventati lasciano le foglie
2009
cm 107 x 187
Wood, paper, colors e string

In this work the artist gives form to a whole made up of heterogeneous elements that are sewn together with double-strength thread: the tree trunk, the frame, the mirrors, the leaves. But what is visible conceals yet another development: the image is disassembled and fragmented by the mirrors.
Flavio Paolucci’s works require the viewer to reflect upon them in silence, for some time, in order to be fully perceived. The combination of different compositional elements is a strong characteristic of the artist’s language.

Flavio Paolucci
Frammentazione
2008
Bronze and mirror

Paolucci places his objects, as if they were creatures, on bases that are like shelves, made of wood or glass, attached to the walls at a specific height, to give the idea of a horizon or landscape. These shelves hold the single elements that make up the work, and they fix it to the wall. In the exhibition, one of the shelves there is another house into which a ray of light, made from bronze, penetrates at an oblique angle. Often there are scraps gathered from nature. “I don’t think it’s possible to betray the relationship between nature and man, which in the final analysis originates in day and night, through life and death, but that is constantly being renewed” (Flavio Paolucci).

Flavio Paolucci
Le gianette dell'artista
2009
cm 300 x 127 x 47
Bronze, marble and brass

What succeeds overall in these works is the gesture and care with which the artist treats every single element of his compositions, the control and concentration of a person who has distanced himself from the relentless rhythms posed by society in order to live isolated in a place where he is truly at home.

Flavio Paolucci
Nella rovina vegeta la natura
2009
cm 62 x 148 x 14,5
Bronze and wood

The exhibition opens, in the first room of the gallery, with a series of three large works on paper that are characterised by nearly uniform backgrounds. Flavio Paolucci explained their meaning: the artist’s goal was to represent the last light perceived, in the last traces of a glow, that are left behind before entering the darkness: something that can be experienced physically and in one’s imagination.

In his rigorous and rarefied works on paper, found in various parts of the gallery, Paolucci obtains results in which formal perfection seems almost mathematical. Paper and wood have always been the most loved and used elements used by the artist.

Flavio Paolucci
L'ottavo lato
2009
cm 103 x 100 x 42
Glass, wood and brass

Towards the end of the 70’s he was very taken with covering pieces of wood that he found in the woods near his home on the edge of Biasca with layers of paper and glue. Thus he created a kind of skin on these natural pieces of wood, using the typical colours of the forest floor and rocks, that Harald Szeemann, in an essay dedicated to the artist from 1987, called “membranes made of taut and woven paper”, recognising their character as skin-like, epithelium, derma (“From Skin to Body – Round Trip” was the text’s title).

In his essay, Szeemann hypothesised about a gradual conversion from “a well defined thought process rendered by the artist with a fluctuating language, into something that conveys and accentuates something that is indefinite”. And, even after many years this consideration is still valid when observing these delicate works installed on the walls of the gallery, in a constant in a dialogue with the third dimension.
These works appear suspended in time.
I find Flavio Paolucci’s works to be densely romantic, but with an authentic and pure romanticism.

Valentina Bucco

Opening
Thursday December 10 – 18.00

Duration
December 10, 2009
– February 27, 2010

Opening Hours
Tuesday - Friday
09.30 - 12.00 14.30 - 18.30
Saturday
09.30 - 12.00 14.30 - 17.00
Sunday/Monday Closed