Fondazione Giorgio Cini
Emilio Isgro’
On the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, the retrospective
exhibition, of the internationally renowned painter and poet, but also, novelist,
playwright and stage director, Emilio
Isgro’ – Barcellona – Sicily - 1937 - until November 24 - is curated by Germano Celant, in collaboration with the
Emilio Isgrò Archive. The show is a
broad survey reconstructing Isgro’s creative and aesthetic development,
spanning from the 1960s to the present day. The rich selection of works begins
with the first erasures of books – 1964 - and continues with poems on
emulsified canvases and the Storie rosse
- Red Stories - to arrive at the imposing, complex series of texts erased in
the historic volumes of the Enciclopedia
Treccani – 1970 - and in the more recent ethnic volumes of the Codici ottomani - Ottoman Codices- 2010.
Weltanschauung – 2007 – 12 elements – oil on canvas
Emilio Isgro' and Secretary-General of
the Fondazione Cini, Pasquale Galiardi
Dichiaro di non essere San Giorgio – I declare I am not San Giorgio
2012 – oil on canvas
“The theme I addressed
for this exhibition in Venice, the city where I made the first erasures in
1964, inevitably focuses on language. That’s why I thought I had to resort to
the biblical tradition as interpreted in Moby Dick, Melville’s wonderful novel. Visitors
to the exhibition will enter Melville's erased text - "the belly of the whale", that is also, the belly of media
language that smothers with noise its real, desperate silence.”
Emilio Isgro’
Isgro’s experimental and linguistic journey is installed in a new,
spectacular way in an all-encompassing architectural setting. The rooms in the Napoleonic Wing of the Fondazione Cini have additional
transversal and diagonal partitions to break up and modify the space, almost as
if they were lines on a sheet of paper.
They in fact serve as paper supports for the results of a new enormous
operation of erasure, conducted once again on literary material, Herman Melville's Moby Dick. For the
visitor, it is like entering a large book, visually modified by the artist - "the belly of the whale".
Curator Germano Celant
Karl Marx – a sinistra – mangia nel rosso vestito di rosso
Federich Engels – a destra – beve nel rosso vestito di rosso
Codici Ottomani – 2010 – 14 volumes
acrylic on a book in
a plexiglass and wooden box
Cancellazione ottmana energica – Energetic Ottoman Erasure
2010-2012 - acrylic on
a book in a plexiglass and wooden box
Cancellazione ottomana esitante – Hesitant Ottoman Erasure
2010-2012 - acrylic on
a book in a plexiglass and wooden box
La Giara di Archimede – di Gorgia – di Empedocle
The Jars of Archimedes
– of Gorgias – of Empedocles
2015 mixed media
Libri Cancellati - Erased Books
Ink on atlas books in
a plexiglass and wooden box
Where is - Tokyo? – Paris – Vancouver – Agadir
2016 - acrylic on
globes