PLASTIC SQUARES

Planita Gallery, Rome 1986
Wessel O’Connor LTD, New York 1987
Marconi Studio 17, Milan 1987
Trisorio Studio, Naples 1987
Project Florence for Contemporary Art, Fortezza da Basso Florence, 1998
Casoli Studio, Milan1988
Museum Gallery, Bolzano 1988
Planita Gallery, Rome 1988

THE ARTWORKS

“Before this series of Squadre Plastiche, most of Pirri’s paintings were circular. The sense of the circle is something which returns constantly to the same point, which over time modulates and grows, as in iterative music. Serial structures are, then, also close to the idea of the circle: the underlining of a rhetoric produced by a sequence. These tables, each with its own aura, are never isolated one from another. They are always presented in groups, modulates sequences of elements of varying dimensions and number. They are composed in orderly ‘drawings’, concentrated mostly on the margins, showing an attention to the contours of the shape. The interval between them is measured carefully and simply, and the golden section is neither refused with a pretense of originality, not is it exalted as an inviolable mystery of Tradition. It is used naturally, as if by a functionalist architect, to form solemn groupings; like blackbirds on an ancient tower, like the frame of a modernist doorway. These Squadre give themselves as objects in the world rather than windows onto the world, but they are never banal objects of the world. Like the humble unrefined wood which used to support a carefully sculpted Christ, Pirri’s tables look up at us with reverence and awe: crucifixes, where the serial structures of the squadra (an allusion to sense) substitutes the structure of the cross which used to define the space of sense.”

From the catalogue of the exhibition edited by Carolyn Christov Bakargiev, Galleria Alice e Galleria Planita, Rome, November-December 1988.to read more click here

THE ARTIST

“A luminous glow surrounded each of these, like the halos of saints. They step forward bearing a message. In the culminating moment of the action they are struck dumb, they have forgotten, they have been hit by an oblivion that nails them in their plastic positions rendering them motionless, alien. And the existence of these works of art stems from this immobility which narrates the slow, continuous change of the light emanating from them, the unceasing rhythm of appearing and disappearing. A silent testimony being spell-bound by a new existence, but not absent from the world on account of this. Silence is not a doing without existence, but reserve concern. The Squadre Plastiche speak of this state of language, of this “astonishment” of expression.
Even though the Squadre Plastiche are not figurative works, they evoke the human presence. The painting that reverberates on the walls is comparable to a live energy, changeable, palpitating. The work is a contrast between something rigid, static, and something dynamic, in action. An inert body, hanging on the wall, with holds in the paintings dynamic thrust, which aims at the surrounding space, longing to invade the entire environment. These works of art represent the attempt to realise at the same time work of art and the proper space for its reception (not only architecturally).
The form is circular; the surface treated with evenly spread powdered graphite. The painting delineates fissures, gaps, wounds through which the background space can be glimpsed. In the latest circular paintings (those done for the exhibition at the Trisorio Gallery), I painted the backs with a yellow colour that reverberated on the walls. The glow of light and colour distanced the painting from the walls, making it seem like a vestige, inert relic floating in an indefinite dimension. The theme of distance has since become ever more determining, bringing me to the first Squadre Plastiche.”
Alfredo Pirri