«There is no room left for any painting, and the only possible experience is that of emptiness, a flame lit within us to illuminate this infinite void that alone gives us life».
Claudio Parmiggiani
Tornabuoni Art presents the first exhibition in France entirely devoted to Claudio Parmiggiani’s Delocazioni. The gallery’s Parisian space will be inhabited by new works that the artist conceived in situ, offering a new perspective on the themes that Parmiggiani continues to tackle through this emblematic technique.
First exhibited at Modena’s Galleria Civica in 1970, Parmiggiani’s «shadow sculptures» have developed over the course of his artistic career becoming the core of his practice.
After the Second World War, at a time of crisis for traditional figurative art, the artist developed a language that was both personal and profoundly universal, giving his research an innovative character and making him a pioneer of his time. The deep reflection on the theme of absence that permeates his work is at the heart of his Delocazioni: works of shadows and imprints made with fire, smoke and soot, in which traces of books, butterflies, flasks, skulls, musical instruments and human forms transport observers to distant and undefined spaces.
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«An environment of shadows, shadows of canvases peeled away from the walls, shadows of shadows, as if we were seeing behind a veil another veiled reality (…) and so on, losing ourselves ad infinitum, in search of an image and, through that image, the desire to see ourselves».
Claudio Parmiggiani
Among the most notable examples of the Delocazioni are his installations at the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain in Geneva (1995), Centre Pompidou in Paris (1997), Promotrice delle Belle Arti in Turin (1998), Musée Fabre in Montpellier (2002), Tel Aviv Art Museum (2003), Museo Nacional De Bellas Artes de La Habana (2006), Collège des Bernardins in Paris (2008) and, more recently, at the Fondazione Cini in Venice (2022) on the occasion of the On Fire exhibition organised in collaboration with Tornabuoni Art.
This exhibition is in line with the gallery’s tradition of presenting major monographic exhibitions on the masters of post-war Italian art. It will be accompanied by a catalogue published by Forma Edizioni in Italian, English and French. Echoing Tornabuoni Art’s commitment to promoting and deepening knowledge of the artists it represents, the catalogue will include three texts written for the occasion by Philippe Dagen, Bruno Corà and Andrea Cortellessa.