The Parisian headquarters of the MASSIMODECARLO – Pièce Unique gallery, located in the Marais district, after an exhibition dedicated to Peter Schuyff with works dated from 1987 to 2022, presents the work of the iconic artist Carla Accardi, who is famous, among other things, for being one of the founding members of the Forma 1 group.

Pièce Unique was inaugurated in 1989 by Lucio Amelio, the legendary Neapolitan gallery owner and true icon of the international art system in those years, with the aim of presenting exhibitions consisting of a single work, always visible from a large window overlooking the street. Today Pièce Unique, after years of neglect and after a thorough restoration by the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, dedicates its space and its showcase to Carla Accardi through a work that also gives the exhibition its title, «Illusione». As Francesca Sabatini, communications manager of Pièce Unique remembers, after having already dedicated various solo shows to her in recent years both in London and Milan, the gallery decided to share the artist’s work in France after Cecilia Alemani selected it for the thematic exhibition «The milk of dreams» at the Venice Biennale 2022. For the first time in France and until Saturday 18 June, Pièce Unique therefore allows the public to enjoy Illusione: twelve linen canvases, all of identical dimensions but all of different colors that make up this work which dates back to 2013, the year preceding the artist’s death and which consequently constitutes a sample of her latest productions.

After starting her painting career working on unconventional materials – an example is the work in sicofoil that is exhibited in the gallery – Carla Accardi decided to try her hand at painting on canvas with an engaging and material result, which emerges brightly in the series entitled, actually, Illusione. This sequence of small abstract paintings is arranged in the gallery to form a corner and gives life, one canvas after another, to a set of different sinuous and poetic signs. The abstraction that characterizes her production is here fixed on the linen which, at the same time, allows us to glimpse the pencil marks that made up the preparatory drawing for the work and also the intense coloring that does not stop at the edge of the canvas, but continues until one gets lost in the back of the work. The interweaving of almost tribal motifs, repeated and elaborated without ever stopping, in contrast with the light color of the linen that is their background, gives the work a certain rhythm given both by the sign and by the colored backgrounds.

The fact that it is a work simple to be read seems only an illusion, as more complex concepts lie behind the creation of the codes conceived by Carla Accardi in her works. Day by day, the official Instagram account of Pièce Unique presents the cycle of twelve canvases one at a time, thus reconstituting the idea of ​​continuity that we can see both through the glass window and in the feed.

In the back part of the room there is another work by the artist, dated 2002, which clearly highlights the desire to create a complex of symbols and words that are repeated through decisive brushstrokes dense with fluorescent colors, taking up the idea of ​​code that we had already met in the sequence formed by the series on display.

Following this, the next Pièce Unique exhibition will be dedicated to the presentation of three works by Nico Vascellari, which will be exhibited individually from 21 to 25 June.

Info:

Carla Accardi, Illusione
24.05.2022 – 18.06.2022
MASSIMODECARLO Pièce Unique
57 rue de Turenne, Paris, France