LONDON.- – The Alan Cristea Gallery will present a major new construction together with a site-specific series of drawings as well as a retrospective exhibition of Mimmo Paladino’s prints and multiples. Born in Paduli, in the Benevento region, in 1948, Paladino lives and works in Italy where he has studios in Rome, Paduli and Puglia. The exhibition at 34 Cork Street will focus on a large-scale mixed-media installation as well as a new body of watercolours and works on paper backed onto canvas specifically conceived by Paladino for the space. Simultaneously, in the gallery at 31 Cork Street, a retrospective exhibition will be staged of the editions published by Alan Cristea Gallery over the past seven years, including a series of recent mosaic multiples. These two exhibitions will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with an introductory essay by Dr. Jill Lloyd.

For three months, from April 2011, Paladino dominated Milan’s cultural agenda. A jet fighter adorned by the artist landed in the octagon of the galleria Vittorio Emanuelle. His films were shown in Milanese theatres, his literary sources discussed in a festival of art and literature. His salt mountain strewn with horses, which he first installed 20 years ago, was resurrected in the Piazetta Reale adjacent to the Duomo. His gigantic Helmet sculpture looked out from the Castello Sofrzesco. His bronze Scudi (shields) stood guard in the courtyard of the Palazzo Reale protecting the entrance to a vast retrospective exhibition of his work in the palace itself; the show was curated by Flavio Arensi and the catalogue texts written by Arthur C. Danto and Germano Celant who charted the artist’s career from the first mention of the Transavantguardia and established the artist’s perennial significance in an era dominated by a Postmodernist aesthetic.

The focal point of the exhibitions at the Alan Cristea Gallery will be a large construction featuring 89 pencil drawings on wooden blocks surrounding a framed mixed-media work on paper. Also to be exhibited are 32 new unique works alongside 23 prints and multiples. Paladino’s compendium of motifs – flora, fauna, and domestic objects together with his signature depiction of a vulnerable human face will fill the works whatever the medium. These motifs speak of the unchanging nature of human values and emotions and of the continuum of the past into the present.

Paladino's first solo exhibition was held at the Studio Oggetto, Caserta in 1969. In 1980 he participated in the Aperto '80 at the Venice Biennial along with Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi and Nicola De Maria (leaders of the Transavantgarde movment). A major retrospective of his work was held in Munich at the Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in 1985. Other major solo exhibitions include Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro in 1992, Forte Belvedere, Florence in 1993, Scuderie di Palazzo Reale, Piazza del Plebiscito and Villa Pignatelli, Naples 1995-6, South London Gallery 1999, Centro per l'Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato, Italy 2002-03 and the Estorick Collection, London in 2004. Paladino's work is held in major public collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Tate Collection, London the Kunstmuseum, Basel, the Nationalgalerie, Berlin and the Australian National Gallery, Canberra. His interest in the relationship between visual art and sound led him to collaborate with musician Brian Eno, firstly on an installation for the Roundhouse, London in 1999 and again on a site-specific work for the Museo dell’Ara Pacis, Rome in 2008.

The Alan Cristea Gallery is the exclusive distributor of Mimmo Paladino’s editions worldwide.