MILAN.- Cortesi Gallery Milano introduces its new show in Milano, dedicated to artists who perfectly synthesise the gallery's artistic research.
The title Conversazioni Parallele (parallel conversations) suggests creating dialogues between two artists who started their career by interacting with the concepts and beliefs of the ZERO movement: Grazia Varisco through the Italian Gruppo T and herman de vries as part of the Dutch Gruppo Nul.
Furthermore, from the 1970s onwards, after their initial artistic experience, both artists evolved their creative approach into something incredibly personal, becoming some of the most important artists established and exhibited in the most crucial museums internationally.
The two exhibition rooms at Cortesi Gallery focus precisely on the second period of these artists.
Grazia Varisco (1937 Milan, Italy) works inhabit the surrounding space through simple geometric signs, creating different spatial dimensions that challenge the viewer's perception and disorient every sense.
Varisco works with the expressive variations of surfaces using shapes and elements that compare opposites, such as order/disorder, above/below, before/after, etc.
The shapes seem disrupted but are calibrated by staggered overlapping planes in precise relation to each other, weightless depths of empty surfaces, perimeters reflected in the shadows and suspended in sudden gaps in the field of vision.
In her works, she plays with the lack of balance. The variable inclination of forms that are always the same and always different is calculated based on their respective perceptual weight, a systematic perception of unstable equilibria, a situation of fluid uncertainty not guaranteed by the rectilinear arrangement of structures.
Finally, the city of Milano has proudly announced the official dates of her forthcoming show; in June 2022, Palazzo Reale Milano will host a solo show dedicated to Grazia Varisco.
herman de vries (1931, Alkmaar, Holland) works by intertwining art, science and philosophy. He has focused on natural materials, processes and phenomena, presenting them as primary realities of human existence.
Since then, he has been collecting, cataloguing, ordering natural fragments, directing our attention to the diversity of the world around us, witnessing the complicated relationship between humans and nature.
Earth, in particular, represents a symbolic element for de vries and is used as a natural pigment that is intended to present the essential and primary chromatic dimensions of the world and different cultures.
As an artist, biologist and scientist, de vries believe that natural processes and phenomena cannot be translated and explained solely in rational terms. All his work tends towards this poetic and suspended transposition of the meaning of life.
In 2015, he successfully represented the Netherlands at the International Art Exhibition, part of the Venice Biennale, with a national pavilion project.
