Yellow as an abstract, studied and artificial materialization of light. Spaces as scenes and theatrical wings. And sextants in order to place ourselves in time and space. Gianni Dessì’s artistic peculiar elements are back to Bologna’s Otto Gallery in via D’Azeglio until April 15th 2018. The exhibition Sestante presents six works belonging to different periods of Dessì’s production, works that help to trace six different steps of his artistic exploration travel, six moments, six hic et nunc to look back, in time and space, again. Exactly as a traveler would do, with the same curious  and nostalgic look. And with the necessary need to find his location in that precise place: that’s why sextant.

A solo navigation for Dessì since years working in between abstract/informal and figurative/symbolic, between free action and rational control. And the travel, despite his great and well studied coherence shown in the exhibition, presents heterogeneous and autonomous moments even in a constant dialogue between them. Below it, his complex artistic personality strongly emerges.

Dessì’s production, in fact, developed, as Lorand Hegyi affirmed, “between the analytical-methodological-rigorous and the treasonous-skeptical-indipendent. Even if he works inside a permanent linguistic innovation process, he expresses some elements of a reflection which belongs to the best european painting tradition”. The “traveler” Dessì brings to Otto Gallery an Art that claims his visionary look over the world and takes his distance from concrete issues in order to find a three-dimensional space in which collocate itself.

It’s easy, in fact, while looking the big canvas, to be caught by Dessì’s art direction origins. Every work is like a scene or a window, an open dimension towards another reality as in his famous Studio giallo (2003) or in Vista (2012), a big charcoal sketch with tick dark frame. It’s Dessì himself to suggest this relation to a “window frame: a view to everything I made during these years, a sketch of my production”.

In the Otto Gallery’s exhibition there is also a sculpture, Ritratto (2014/15), shown in a perfect dynamic dialogue with Studio giallo, and two recent works, Conversation piece (2017), that help the visitor to give a look on the last painting development in Dessì’s artistic research.

Guido Luciani

Info:

Gianni Dessì. Sestante
2018, January 20th  – April 15th
OTTO Gallery Arte contemporanea
via D’Azeglio 55 Bologna