Enrico Castellani. Le Superfici e i Fondamenti

Not coincidentally, as Tommaso Trini writes in his essay on the exhibition: “Castellani’s work does not reveal itself; rather, it expands. If we have known since Heraclitus that ‘Nature loves to hide,’ and that even today cosmologists must reckon with darkness, whether in energy or matter, we should update our languages to fit nature. Nor will an artist’s ode to light be enough to help us see clearly. Oh uncommon light of art, illuminate the discrete steps of the waves and/or particles that flow between hollows and reliefs to flood your surfaces in beauty! Building on specific iconic foundations, Castellani embraces the duality of surfaces and/or inner emptiness: a violin masterfully played. These extro/intro/flexed bodies are tools of haptic observation, which seem to resonate at the touch of our eyes; frameless, they open up new fields of space and energy. The closed surfaces are in dialogue with the open foundations, like steps on the moon. The surfaces radiate more light when animated by concavities or wells that sensitize them: this was young Enrico’s pivotal insight. His art thus expanded over every dark-object surface, as well as into sculpture, installation, events, and the conceptual realm, special tangents less explored until now.”

This exhibition is organized in close collaboration with Fondazione Enrico Castellani. It is accompanied by an essay by Tommaso Trini, which examines for the first time the implications and unknown territories contemplated by Castellani’s work: starting with the foundational principles on which his thought is based, to arrive at possible connections with other disciplines.

Enrico Castellani (1930 - 2017) graduated from architecture school in Brussels in 1956; returning to Italy in 1959, he founded the Azimut/h gallery and magazine with Piero Manzoni. In that same year, he created his first relief surface, blazing one of the most significant paths of experimentation in the postwar period. Major exhibitions of his work have been presented most recently at Fondazione Prada, Milan in 2001, Cambridge University in 2002, the Pushkin Museum, Moscow in 2005, Ca’ Pesaro, Venice and Musée d’Art Moderne, Saint-Etienne in 2013.