ENZO CUCCHI
LA MOSTRA
LA MOSTRA
Castelbasso (Teramo), Fondazione Malvina Menegaz
July 22 – August 27, 2023
Exhibition views: © Paolo Di Paolo. Courtesy Fondazione Malvina Menegaz, Castelbasso
Curated by Ilaria Bernardi
Enzo Cucchi (Morro d’Alba, Ancona, 1949), one of Italy’s most important artists, conceived the exhibition as an excursus into his pictorial and drawing output in the last decade, which has so far not been investigated enough.
The exhibition spans the three floors of Palazzo De Sanctis.
On the ground floor, visitors are greeted by the only sculptural work on display, Mirare (2016), in which a steel cable hung between two walls pierces the nape of a bronze head.
In the adjoining room, we are greeted by another eye, this time painted on a large panel combined with ceramic appliqués, similar in technique to the work situated in front, which shows a human skeleton, pendant to the skulls outlined on the two Untitled banners nearby.
In the third room on the ground floor, one work from 1978 pays homage to the beginnings of Cucchi’s career, in which painting, sculpture, and ceramics merge into a unicum.
At the top of the stairs that connect the ground floor with the second floor, Cucchi a passo uno (2012) is screened: a stop-motion visionary journey around the artist’s work, directed by Maurizio Finotto and made in collaboration with students from the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna.
This leads us to the rooms on the second floor, which outline a path through four of the most recurring themes in Cucchi’s work: death; the landscape with its dreamlike and enigmatic atmosphere; the possible three-dimensionality of painting; and the sign, developed through an imaginary “Cathedral” consisting of numerous drawings on paper.
At the end of the viewing of the “Cathedral,” the public is invited to try their hand at the digital version of the artist’s archive in the form of a video game, created in 2021 by Alessandro Cucchi, Julián Palacios and Fantastico Studio, and available for PC, PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch consoles, online and also as an App for cell phones.
Finally, the top floor pays homage to the great visual and environmental power of Cucchi’s sign, presenting paintings of monumental dimensions.