anish kapoor | giulio paolini

Anish, you start instead from a vitalist principle, full of life, where thought can materialize in different forms and in different ways.
If I observe that small black triangle filling a top corner of the room, an important geometric shape like the Pythagorean-Euclidean triangle, something that reminds us of the sum of squares built on the sides......
then, I think of maths, of geometry, of the discovery of the universe, of the foundation of a new world, of reason, surely, but side by side with emotion and sentiment, shying away from any sentimentality.

The dichotomy that I am talking about, from white to black, from everything to nothing, from fullness to emptiness, is not a contrast; it is the sum of two extreme, basic positions which do not exclude each other but merge into one, creating a new status.

There, I was asked why on earth I was so foolhardy as to invite you to have a dual exhibition. Thanks very much for agreeing to it and for having done so with a great sense of reciprocal curiosity.
The result is that, on this occasion, the different positions do not mean a rift, but a co-creation: the white work, completely empty, and the black work, which encircles all the colours until they blend into the most absolute black, are like a supernova or a black hole. The former passes onto the viewer its dense load of light and thought, while the latter holds onto the energy that the author has stored into it.
In both cases the works are a source of thought which convey concepts and meanings from the artist to the spectator and vice versa, from today to tomorrow, from order to disorder.
In this sense, Giulio, I quote one of your statements that says it is the work that looks at us, and not the other way around.

Opening Thursday 16th February 2023 from 4pm

The artwork, charged with the intentions of its creator, like a source of light after charging all night, is able to give back more than it has received, drawing from this unexpected union forces of opposite sign.
As for your work, Anish, I get the feeling I am standing in front of a black hole that you are filling with your energy, with your thoughts, a moment before it explodes.

Thoughts hold our world and the entire creation.
The problem is to understand whether we created the world or if the world created us and, therefore, whether we created art or if it was art that created us.

“Exegi monumentum aere perennius” wrote Horace, and Sol LeWitt once told me that conceptual art is the only thing that will survive a nuclear disaster.
I think we are getting closer, but I keep hoping it will not come to that. If it did, I might change my mind about miracles. Meanwhile, let's enjoy the miracle of this exhibition where two great artists like you, still so young, invited by surprise, full of ideas show us the unexpected result of this comparison. New works at the limits of the visible and understandable that only masterpieces reach from the hight of conquered freedom.
Freedom that comes from a work open to discussion and not closed in a stubborn affirmation of intellectual supremacy.

So, this apparent contrast which is actually a sum of visions creates the metaphor that ultimately we know as art.
A metaphor is a shift of meaning (from the Greek metà forein) that here becomes the meeting point of two schools of thought and gives birth to a game.
Sure enough, in the end we realise that all this doing, undoing, building, and accumulating has been nothing but a serious game, the game of life or, if you prefer, the business of living.

So, I would like to ask you all here this evening: “Do you like these works?” I hope the answer is no. These works are not meant to be liked, they are meant to provoke thought.

Massimo Minini