ART CITIES: Venice -Aldo Grazzi

Aldo Grazzi has been starting his artistic practice since the beginning of the 1970’s: during this period, he has been conceiving an approach to the conceptuality that was declined into different forms (photography, video art, and so on). During the 1980’s, his artistic research has been evolving and interwining with the role of curator.  

By: Efi Michalarou
Photo: Galleria Marignana Arte Archive

Aldo Grazzi then reached a clear discontinuity with that decade characterized by the Transavanguardia and contributed to the beginning of a new cultural climate, mostly in Milan, pursued by a new generation of artists at their beginnings. New methods have increasingly been used within his works. They implied rigorous technical disciplines and, through this, he got closer again to the pictorial act. Some travels to Africa (1987/93) became the occasion to make works with people belonging to Maasai and Samburu tribes. During his eclectic and compelling career, Grazzi faced the challenges of recent decades with the impetus of a rebel capable of placing the complex relationship between reality, dreams and the search for freedom at the center of his poetics. Staring from this assumption – that of freedom and dreams – the title “Illusions”, defined by the artist for this exhibition, will certainly not be an invitation to the dreamer’s idle wanderings, but on the contrary will reflect a conscious impulse towards the authenticity of living. His solo exhibition “Illusions” focus in particular on one series by the artist, that of the interwoven beads, which runs from 1988 to the present day. Among the exhibited works, the first to welcome the audience is “Uscito senza scopo nella nebbia” (Gone Aimlessly through the Fog). The visitors are invited from the very beginning of the exhibition to question all forms of utilitarianism – aimless is the art of weaving beads, a repeated gesture, which in the words of Kant translates into the free play of intellect and imagination, as an art that rejects all forms of conformism must be. Along with the fascination of the jewelry of Maasai art, of which Grazzi became an interpreter, the sarcasm and desecrating irony expressed in the constant experimentation of the artistic languages will also be proposed and highlighted in the exhibition.  The series “The myths” is the result of collective illusions, which, however, seems to affirm that once the dimension of illusion has been eliminated, man no longer has hope, except that of a sad and even dangerous conservatism. The works on display emphasize a journey of inner rebellion that is never an end in itself, in which provocation is the instrument and not the aim of a poetics of elsewhere, not a compass that guides the way, but a proud quest aimed at profoundly human and never too human values. From the freedom of a wandering imagination, from the symmetries of colors that artfully and patiently weave plots derived from interior and geographic journeys, one moves into the depths of a spirituality that only finds tranquility in the eventual vision, proposed in the exhibition, of the work Amore, vita e luce (Love, Life and Light), almost a confession of a “mystical anarchist”, as the artist defines himself, who seems to suggest how, precisely through illusion, one can glimpse the different appearances of becoming.

Photo: Aldo Grazzi, Uscito senza scopo nella nebbia, 2019, plastic beads, 17×116 cm, © Aldo Grazzi, Courtesy the artist and Galleria Marignana Arte

Info: Galleria Marignana Arte, Dorsoduro, 141, Rio Terà dei Catecumeni, Venice, Italy, Duration: 17/12/2022-18/2/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.marignanaarte.it/