LONDON.- Mazzoleni is hosting the exhibition The Paradox of Proximity: Agostino Bonalumi and Lee Seung Jio, in collaboration with Kukje Gallery at Mazzoleni London. The show is curated by esteemed Italian writer, art critic and curator Marco Scotini, in conjunction with Archivio Agostino Bonalumi, Milan and the Estate of Lee Seung Jio, Seoul.

This intimate display will showcase pioneering abstractionist Lee Seung Jio’s works, specifically his Nucleus series, where cylindrical “pipe” forms challenge the notion of opticality and played a pivotal role in defining Korean Modernism. These works will be exhibited alongside Agostino Bonalumi’s “extroflexions”, which seek a new dimension of space through monochromatic shaped canvases, each named after a specific colour. The exhibition will adopt this monochromatic theme, showcasing several of Bonalumi's works in white, such as Bianco (1973), juxtaposed with Lee Seung Jio's dark grey and black Nucleus works, like Nucleus 73-18 (1973).

The Paradox of Proximity embodies a significant effort to transcend the boundaries of art history beyond the Western hemisphere, taking inspiration from the ground-breaking project and exhibition Postwar: Art Between the Pacific and the Atlantic, 1945-1965, curated by Okwui Enwezor at Haus der Kunst in Munich in 2016.
Enwezor’s exhibition demonstrated the need to map individual figures, cultural networks, and art systems in the most diverse contexts, as well as the relationship between them. This has since become a priority of the contemporary art agenda to define alternative, parallel, and non-aligned modernities.

In such context, to try to compare the works of two great artists such as the Italian Agostino Bonalumi (1935-2013) and the Korean Lee Seung Jio (1941- 1990), is to demarcate a horizon from the Atlantic to the Pacific during the 1960s and 1970s.
Despite their different cultural and ideological backgrounds, both artists are pioneers in moving beyond the informal, employing a monochromatic character, as well as a rejection of the flat nature of the canvas and two-dimensionality. Lee Seung Jio’s work takes on a tubular form (repeated, rhythmic, and obsessive) and Bonalumi’s regularly spaced “extroflexions”, rectilinear, with ribbed or ‘shuttered’ effects. The exhibition title therefore alludes to the spatial and temporal distance between the two artists, whilst also highlighting the intriguing affinity of the research between them, thereby creating this paradox.

This exhibition serves as a testament to the fascinating parallels between Post-War Italian experimentations and the emergence of geometric abstraction in Korea. Through their partnership, Mazzoleni and Kukje Gallery will further explore these connections and shared themes at their joint booth at Frieze Masters since 11 October to 15 October, and welcome visitors and collectors alike to experience both presentations and explore the fusion of Italian and Korean artistic cultures.

AGOSTINO BONALUMI

Born in Vimercate, Milan in 1935, Agostino Bonalumi studied technical design and mechanics and was a self- taught painter, showing his work from a young age.
In 1958, Agostino Bonalumi, Enrico Castellani and Piero Manzoni exhibited at Galleria Pater in Milan, followed by further shows in Rome and Lausanne. The following year Bonalumi and Castellani started making their first three-dimensional canvases, known as extroflected or shaped canvases, developing the so-called “painting- object”.

In the 1960s, Bonalumi started developing his personal style and methodological approach with a series of works featuring “extroflexions” of the canvas, gradually refining the dialectic between volume and void, concave and convex. In 1961 at the Kasper Gallery in Lausanne, Bonalumi was one of the founding members of the Nuova Scuola Europea group and in 1965, Arturo Schwarz gave Bonalumi a solo show at his gallery in Milan, for which Gillo Dorfles wrote a catalogue essay.

In 1966, he began a long period of collaboration with the Galleria del Naviglio, Milan, which became his exclusive agent and in 1973 published, for Edizioni del Naviglio, a large monograph also edited by Gillo Dorfles. That same year, he was invited to the Venice Biennale with a group of works and, in 1970, with a solo room. He then spent a period of study and work in Mediterranean Africa and the United States, where he debuted with a solo show at the Bonino Gallery, New York. In 1967, he was invited to the São Paulo Biennale and, in 1968, to the Youth Biennale in Paris. In 1967, Bonalumi created his first environmental work, Blu abitabile, displayed at the show Lo spazio dell’immagine in Foligno. The following year, he presented another large-scale environment work, Grande Nero, for a solo show at the Museum am Ostwall in Dortmund.

Bonalumi also worked in set design, creating the set and costumes for Susanna Egri’s ballet Partita, performed at the Teatro Romano in Verona in 1970, and for the ballet Rot, staged in 1972 at the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome.

In 1979, he presented the environmental work Dal giallo al bianco e dal bianco al giallo in the exhibition Pittura- Ambiente at Palazzo Reale in Milan and in 1980 he staged a major retrospective at the Palazzo Te in Mantua, which covered his entire career. In 2001, he was awarded the Presidente della Repubblica Prize, which was celebrated with a solo show at the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca in Rome in 2002 and in 2003, the Institut Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt mounted the solo show Agostino Bonalumi: malerei in der dritten dimension. Bonalumi never stopped evolving his research and this drove him to complete a cycle of bronze sculptures based on designs developed in the late 1960s. During the last period of his activity, his works were exhibited on a global scale, such as Brussels, Moscow, New York and Singapore. In summer 2013, he collaborated on a major exhibition in London, the opening of which he unfortunately did not live to see.

Agostino Bonalumi died in Monza 2013. Mazzoleni represents Agostino Bonalumi’s Estate.

LEE SEUNG JIO

A pioneer of Korean geometric abstract painting, Lee Seung Jio occupies an unparalleled position in the history of Korean modern art. With the debut of his trademark series Nucleus in 1967, he paved the way for Korean geometric abstractionism and thereafter rigorously formulated a unique and original formal language in an unceasing manner for over 20 years before his early death. Since the latter half of the 1970s, Lee expanded his artistic oeuvre in relation to the Dansaekhwa movement, pursuing monochrome paintings of neutral colours and adopting Korean traditional paper, hanji, as an artistic medium. Characterized by cylindrical forms reminiscent of “pipes", his paintings not only symbolize modern civilization but also challenge the notion of opticality, evoking a sensory illusion that oscillates between the two-dimensional flatness and three-dimensional structure as well as the abstract and the figurative. Sharing the title of “Nucleus”—meaning core—Lee’s works are a crystallization of his life-long contemplation and pursuit of the truly pictorial, demonstrating the essence of modernist abstract painting.

Lee Seung Jio was born in Yongchon, North Korea in 1941 and passed away in Seoul, Korea, in 1990, at the age of 49. He studied painting at Hong-Ik University and was a professor at Joongang University of Arts. While acting as a founding member of the avant-garde art organization “Origin” and “AG (Korean Avant-Garde Association),” he received multiple awards at the National Art Exhibition, playing a vital role as an intermediary between the avant-garde and mainstream art. He further participated in major group exhibitions led by Dansaekhwa artists, which established him as one of the most representative Korean abstract painters. His works have been widely exhibited around the world, including the large-scale retrospective, Lee Seung Jio: Advancing Columns at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea in 2020, and other solo exhibitions at Perrotin Gallery, Hong Kong (2016) and Tina Kim Gallery, New York (2020). His works are in the collection of prominent institutions worldwide, including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea; Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul; Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul; and Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt, among others.

Mazzoleni and Kukje Gallery
The Paradox of Proximity: Agostino Bonalumi and Lee Seung Jio
October 11th, 2023 - November 30th, 2023
Curated by Marco Scotini