QUELLO CHE AVANZA

Nomas Foundation
January 25 – February 25, 2017
Rome

THE EXHIBITION

QUELLO CHE AVANZA is the second step of the project I pesci non portano fucili, title chosen by Alfredo Pirri, who payed homage to Philip K. Dick’s work, where Dick imagined a society disarmed and fluid like the open sea.
For the project, conceived with the collaboration of Nomas Foundation, MACRO and MAXXI, both public and private organizations shared the undertaking, as strongly wished by the artist.
Between November 2016 and December 2017 Alfredo Pirri transformed the spaces of Nomas Foundation into a studio where he could work at Quello che avanza (cyanotype 204-2017, environment size). The work, that would be the centre of a great retrospective held at Macro, investigated the idea of time and conservation, considering the alteration, degeneration and memory of the actual image, particularly referring to residual images.
Daniele Roccato, composer and double-bass player, one of the most original musicians in the contemporary music scene, collaborated with the artist presenting his concert WU WEY at the opening of the exhibition.

THE ARTWORK

Quello che avanza, the prosecution of Alfredo Pirri’s everlasting research on light and colour, is the fruit of a study of cyanotype, a technique that permits to produce large off-camera photographic prints, of variations of deep blue. The work consists of 144 cyanotypes, which, as a whole, give the viewer the sensation of being wrapped up by the space as well as by the work. 130 of the cyanotypes show the phases of working and the residue produced, while 14 are the result of a unique technique, with the use of feathers laid directly on the sheets, compounded of chemical substances and exposed to UV-rays.
The evocation of vegetal forms, captured in some of the images, is related to the work of botanist Anna Atkins, a pioneer in the study of flora through cyanotype, and author of “Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions”.
Quello che avanza refers both to what remains and to something that comes forward: a journey into the artist’s work and critical thinking, turned to the past, but at the same time reckoning the future.