Alfredo Pirri. Light and mud

The Roman gallery Z20 Sara Zanin presents the Alfredo Pirri's works Pirri curated by Cecilia Canziani and Davide Ferri until 29 July 2022. An exhibition that is specularly divided into the two gallery spaces to reread Pirri's entire artistic research in a relationship with the internal and external space of the work, through movements that refer to breathing and expansion, sinking and rising.

Alfredo Pirri

Alfredo Pirri, an Italian painter currently working in Rome, has ventured into various disciplines during his artistic career, from painting and sculpture to architecture and installation. Pirri's name within the art world began to become familiar during the 1980s when his first solo exhibitions were held. His fame was consecrated by the 1998 Venice Biennale and by Achille Bonito Oliva who included him in the group exhibition Minimalia: An Italian Vision in 20th Century Art in New York in 1999.

Pirri's artistic investigation revolves around the interaction between matter, volume and colour as a vehicle for light. Space, fundamental to his research, is in constant confrontation with architecture, to recreate a habitable space and at the same time a place that fulfils a social and political function (hence his numerous collaborations with well-known architects).

Light and mud, the title of the exhibition at Z20 Sara Zanin's gallery, is a combination that refers to the contrast between the area and the viscous matter that characterises the two protagonists; but it also refers to the verticality of the space of painting and the horizontality of the place of sculpture: the specific places of painting, the wall and the floor. Places that are perpetually invaded by light, a material capable, like sound, of dilating and constructing space.

The room in Via della Vetrina hosts his latest installation, for the first time visible to the public. The large papers, engraved and painted through a process of immersion in colour, project cosmic images and sound maps. Paintings enclosed in an asymmetrical wooden frame that at times appears as a pure structure and at other times as a space carried by the painting. A space that Pirri reinforces thanks to a stratification of Plexiglas panels that only partially cover the painting and project spots with regular contours, in soft, light colours, onto the engravings at the base of the canvas. The autonomy of the work reflects the autonomy of the place where it is located. A work poised between painting, sculpture and architecture.

The installation is contrasted by Untitled (2005) and Street of Flags (1996), two works in dialogue with each other. Two horizons that relate to each other with a flagpole painted matt black and bent to create a circular shape that brings the eye back to the ground. The two works coexist in the same exhibition room with an anonymous series (1985) of unpublished works that radiate a state of tension and melancholy conveyed by the darkness of the black background obtained with body paint torn by hopeful sudden flashes of light.

At Z20 Sara Zanin's other gallery venue, in Via Baccio Pontelli, the exhibition revolves around Compagni e angeli (2019), an installation of centripetal Plexiglas panels that destroy the contrasts between inside and outside, potentially expanding during the visitor's experience. An architecture that contrasts with the 1985 papers in which light and darkness once again clash strongly.

Photos made by Carlotta Ceccarini