Organized by Frist Art Museum in Nashville, Tennessee by Executive Director Susan H. Edwards, “Claudio Parmiggiani: Dematerialization” is this Italian artist first North American museum exhibition. Opening on Saturday, February 2, 2019 in the Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery and on view through May 5, 2019, the show features a selection of fifteen two- and three-dimensional works that address the passage of time, mortality, absence, memory and silence.
“Parmiggiani’s art stands against the grain of our frenetic, cacophonous, image-infused culture,” says Dr. Edwards. “His works are nuanced responses to and cautionary warnings about overabundance. His aesthetic calm provides room for reflection and the opportunity for a contemplative and transformative experience.”
More than forty years ago, Parmiggiani developed his signature process, delocazione (displacement), when he was first inspired by how contours are left in dust after objects are removed. The process creates negative shadows of forms and shapes, similar to those in photograms, cyanotypes, or batik prints. Instead of using photosensitive materials to achieve this effect, Parmiggiani harnesses fire and combustion in a controlled environment and allows soot, dust, and pigment to settle on objects such as bottles, books, butterflies, musical instruments, or shells. When objects are removed, indexical signs similar to a footprint or a photograph are left on the backgrounds—walls, boards, or canvases—showing what was previously there.
For a closer look, according to Dr. Edwards in a powerful delocazione panel (Untitled, 2017) books appear burned and vaporized. “Parmiggiani places high value on the importance of reading and libraries. He collects rare books and is surrounded by books in his home and studio. His art is richly informed by philosophy, poetry, literature, and history,” said Dr. Edwards.
For more detail on this show, see: fristartmuseum.org.
About
Born in 1943 in Luzzara, Italy, a commune on the banks of the Po River in the region of Emilia-Romagna, as a teen, Claudio Parmiggiani saw his family home, where he made early drawings, engulfed in flames and destroyed by fire. Later, he would use the destructive power of fire as a creative tool.
From 1959 to 1961, the artist attended the Accademia di Belle Arti in Modena. During that time, he became a regular visitor to the studio of Giorgio Morandi, whose incomparable mastery of light and focus on humble subjects made a lasting impression. Although Marcel Duchamp and Piero Manzoni are also often cited as influences, Parmiggiani is associated with the Arte Povera movement and conceptualism of the 1960s and 1970s, he works somewhere in between.
The artist is also interested in the growth patterns found in nature articulated through the Fibonacci sequence and associated with classical ratios found in architecture and music. For example, he has incorporated butterflies and caterpillars into his art for decades which are ancient and universal symbols of change, personal transformation, and the stages of the life cycle, including resurrection. See www.artnet.com/artists/claudio-parmiggiani for more views of his work.