What to see what not to see

WHAT TO SEE WHAT NOT TO SEE
MAURIZIO NANNUCCI

Opening reception and cocktail May, 3 from 6.30 to 9pm
Until July 22, 2017

Galleria Fumagalli is pleased to present the exhibition by Maurizio Nannucci “What to see what not to see”, the artist’s first solo exhibition in Italy after the large retrospective at Maxxi in Rome in 2015.

The exhibition consists of a sequence of five new works by Maurizio Nannucci, made using large neon tubes of different colours that, through images, words and meanings, interact with the gallery spaces. In particular, the project focuses on the reiteration of affirmative and negative phrases that contain some changes concerning motifs and meaning. Through this contrast between two opposing poles, the artist highlights how the pivotal feature of his own achievements is to be sought not in the effectiveness of an individual, self-contained act, as a form of peremptory affirmation, but rather in the continuous suspension of the semiological and semantic components of reality in a precarious but productive area between affirmation and negation, between the impossibility of the response and the performativity of the demand, in a continuous expansion of its latent possibilities. What to see what not to see, what to say… what to hear… what to feel… what to love: the works appear as a series of cogent questions that reflect on the condition of man in society in a twofold relationship, with others and with oneself.

Maurizio Nannucci (Florence 1939) is one of the leading figures in Italian art of the last decades and amongst the most well-known Italian artists on the international scene. Since the mid-1960s, he has been exploring the relationship between art, language and image, between light-colour and space, creating unprecedented conceptual ideas, hallmarked by the use of different media: neon, photography, video, sound, editions and artist's books. His earliest neon works date to 1967, and they gave his work a different dimension of meaning and a new perception of space. Since then, Nannucci's art has always been focused on an interdisciplinary dialogue between work, architecture and urban landscape, as demonstrated by collaborations with Renzo Piano, Massimiliano Fuksas, Mario Botta, Nicolas Grimshaw and Stephan Braunfels. He has exhibited several times at the Venice Biennale, Documenta in Kassel and the biennial shows in São Paulo, Sydney, Istanbul and Valencia. His work has been shown in the most important museums and galleries all over the world.