Five artists, five friends. A situation. This is the starting point of the new group exhibition set up at Galleria Antonio Battaglia in Milan. The situation seems to be that of entering a spatial kaleidoscope where the everyday takes on new meanings through color, humor, and poetic irony.
Corrado Bonomi, L’Accademia di Belle Arti, 1994. Polystyrene, plastic miniatures, 35 x 40 x 50 cm, courtesy Galleria Antonio Battaglia
Curated by gallery owner Antonio Battaglia, the exhibition features paintings, sculptures, and multimedia compositions by five artists considered among the most prolific figures in Italy’s postmodern artistic and cultural scene: Corrado Bonomi, Gianni Cella, Enzo Forese, Maximo Pellegrinetti, and Nicola Vitale. Inspired by the poetry of daily life, they use the figurative image as a portal to a theoretical, philosophical, and socially perceptive worldview; as this exhibition demonstrates, their works resonate emotionally today as they did in the 1980s. Fortunately, joy is timeless. The spirit of friendship–in its familiarity, comfort, and conviviality–is the guiding thread that inspired Antonio Battaglia to conceive the exhibition. The gallery owner also perceived aesthetic and conceptual affinities in the pictorial research of the five artists, through their approach to color and materiality, and their generous use of poetic irony.
Maximo Pellegrinetti, from the top: Paesaggio senese; Sottosopra, 2024, oil and inlay on Chinese green marble, 39 x 22 cm, courtesy Galleria Antonio Battaglia
«Postmodernism is the cultural climate these artists breathed during their training and early exhibitions in the ’70s and ’80s, when, after years of the extreme rigor of conceptual art, there was a return to craftsmanship, the pleasure of painting and using color. Their works combine theoretical elements, social and philosophical references, and the history of their practice based on postmodernism. This defines the imaginary kaleidoscope of the exhibition, also conceived as a total artwork» Battaglia explains. The five artists are not only friends and colleagues, but they belong to a generation forged in a decade where art, design, and literature often overlapped; over the years, each of them has had some connection with Battaglia’s gallery. The historical and cultural context of their artistic practices, which flourished during Italy’s postmodern and conceptual period, provided them with insights into the motivations behind their vivid use of color, experimentation with form, medium, and materiality, and the exploration of the figurative element as a new way to appreciate the everyday pleasures of life – a vase of red roses, the wrapping of your favorite candies, one very happy family.
From the left: Gianni Cella, “Ex-voto”, 2020 – 2023, oil on canvas; “Cammeo”, 1981, painted fiberglass; “Monumentino alla famiglia”, 2024, painted fiberglass, courtesy Galleria Antonio Battaglia
We’ve all opened a can of tuna at least once. But for Corrado Bonomi (born in 1956, in Novara), this ordinary, everyday act continues to take on imaginative new proportions in his Mare series (1987-2024). Mixing media and exploring hybridizations has always led to intriguing visual discoveries in Bonomi’s work, and his series of empty, painted cans exemplifies what Battaglia calls his “pictorial dexterity.” Composed and installed in clusters on the gallery walls, Mare transforms the found object into the thematic and material core of the artwork. Bonomi’s Accademia di Belle Arti (1994), a polystyrene sculpture of a half-eaten cheese devoured by red-eyed mice, and Se son rose sfioriranno (2012), a bouquet of roses made of irrigation tubes and plastic plates, are other sculptural works reflecting on the irony of social conventions in daily life. Enzo Forese (born in 1947, in Milan) brings us into moments of reflection with his series of small oil paintings, Senza titolo (Untitled, 2001-2022). Delicate and minimalist, his still lifes of flowers in vases and vessels invite quiet introspection – the kind we might experience when observing these objects on a table, daydreaming, or immersed in deep thoughts. «This exhibition surprises the audience with its freshness, the diversity of the works, and the nature of the installation that creates dialogues and convergences in the way each work is read – with a composite rhythm resulting in an almost complete artwork in dialogue with the space» says Battaglia.
From the top: Enzo Forese, Senza titolo series and Corrado Bonomi, Se son rose sfioriranno, 2012, courtesy Galleria Antonio Battaglia
The realms of family, fairy tales, and social dynamics blend seamlessly in the art of Gianni Cella (born in 1953, in Pavia). His paintings and sculptures are lively and playful, yet often tinged with a hint of melancholy, as seen in his orange fiberglass piece Monumento alla Famiglia (Family Monument, 2024) that enlivens an entire corner of the gallery. Reflecting contemporary social and family dynamics, this work depicts a happy family of three composed as a totem-like unit reaching toward the sky. In contrast, the marble-based works of sculptor Maximo Pellegrinetti (born in 1960, in Viareggio), La casa e l’albero and Oltre la collina (due case rosse), embody the element of surprise in the exhibition. These works on white marble draw viewers’ attention to the material’s poetic potential, especially when treated with Pellegrinetti’s painterly sensitivity that reinvents its natural veins as part of the pictorial scene.
Nicola Vitale, Nido, 2012, oil on canvas, 77 x 87 cm, courtesy Galleria Antonio Battaglia
Scenes and objects from daily life are treated with optimistic luminosity in Nicola Vitale’s paintings (born in 1956 in Milan), evoked through his often-paradoxical explorations of color, proportion, and subject matter, charming viewers into imagining the unexpected. The artist and poet’s three oil paintings in the exhibition – Nido (Nest, 2015), Pesca (Fishing, 2017), and Boccia (2023) – are like portals to exuberant worlds that are both familiar and curious at the same time. «My subjects are simple – fishing, birds, humans, and nature, for example – but they are transformed in my paintings through my approach to pure color, which is quite artisanal. The subject gains a certain strength and vitality, which makes people perceive it differently in the pictorial image. I think that when a painting has a sense of vitality, it is also joyous» Vitale reflects. For Battaglia, the enduring relevance of these five artists’ work lies in its universally resonant subject matter and the purity of its artistic intent: «Although already extensively discussed by critics over the years, their work is still fresh and always manages to reflect contemporary life. This freshness, simplicity, and purity in the joy of creating thought-provoking works is the most valuable legacy these artists can leave for new generations» the gallery owner concludes. The works of Bonomi, Cella, Forese, Pellegrinetti, and Vitale are generous in their human spirit, reminding us of the inherent joy in daily life and the creative process itself.
Alexia Petsinis
Info:
Cinque artisti, cinque amici. Una situazione
30/10/2024 – 19/11/2024
Curated by Antonio Battaglia
Tuesday to Friday: 4:00 – 7:00 pm
Saturday and Sunday: 11:00am – 1:30pm / 4:00 – 7:30 pm and by appointment
Galleria Antonio Battaglia, Via Ciovasso, 5 Milano
www.galleriaantoniobattaglia.com
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