UNTITLED
Michel Rein Gallery
Paris, 2001
THE SHOW
The exhibition is divided into two parts: the grey room just inside the entrance houses a work composed of around 100 books (or rather book covers) made of animal vellum and acrylic tempera. Arranged in the other rooms of the gallery (or to be more exact placed along the edges) are works that develop the image of the open book and thus become architectonic elements of the space and at the same time chromatic, almost “decorative” phenomena. The exhibition also includes a work composed of two spheres made of paper resting on two sheets (also made of paper). These spheres absorb the echo of the paint spread on the surface of the sheets, creating sculptures of light that change character according to the movement of the sunlight.
THE ARTWORKS
The books in “Penna’s room” ( the first work) are of different formats, and are arranged on the floor in such a way as to seem both a chaotic bookshop and a city seen from above. The books, painted inside, reverberate with different colours, the covers overlapping to create a chromatic landscape full of light and colour surrounded by a grey, indistinct room in which confines and dimensions tend to disappear. A “backdrop” which is reminiscent of the inside of the skull with the “grey matter” contained in it, matter without dimension, without weight, tending towards the infinite.
The works in copper and glass assume the role of a “column” that holds up the gallery, and at the same time are “open pages” that spread from the mother work, occupying the space and becoming its structural nerves.