Michael Werner Gallery, London, is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Italian artist Gianni Piacentino, curated by Centre d’Art Contemporain Geneva’s director Andrea Bellini. The exhibition will feature a consistent body of work, following the development of Piacentino’s artistic career over the last fifty years, from the minimal objects developed between 1966 and 1968 to the present day. .
Piacentino was one of the founding members of Arte Povera, a movement he abandoned early to pursue his own individual and maverick path. Working primarily in polyester-coated and painted wood, he maintained an unwavering commitment to manual skill and highly refined industrial materials. Piacentino’s early minimal sculptures transformed themselves into new shapes that celebrate the idea of dynamism and speed, recalling the vehicles that inspired his projects — motorcycles, monocycles, automobiles, and planes. Creating these works with the same degree of care and attention to detail as industry puts into the production of these machines, Piacentino brings the highest level of handcrafted technique to his perfectly finished forms..
With or without wheels, free-standing or attached to the wall, his objects look like traces of an abandoned utopia. They may be metal-plated or finished in pearlescent automotive paints; they are accented by logos made from the artist's own initials or by words related to flight and racing. His works are rich with psychological and intellectual references, making visual comprehension of space and the sublimation of everyday objects that occupy it strangely unfamiliar. Erasing distinctions between individuality and standardization; painting versus sculpture; and everyday objects versus art objects, these boundless objects are distillations of Piacentino’s lifelong disruption of the status .
in 1945 in Coazze (Turin), Gianni Piacentino lives and works in Turin. His work has been featured in a number of solo and group exhibitions worldwide, most recently at the Metropolitan Art Society in Beirut, at the Warehouse in Dallas and with a solo exhibition in September 2014 at Veneklasen/Werner, Berlin. In 2013, Piacentino was the subject of a large-scale survey at Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva. Other exhibitions include the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2009), MoMA PS1 in New York (1997), Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid (1990), the Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst in Bremen (1981), the Nationalgalerie in Berlin (1978), the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels (1972), the University Museum in Sydney and the Museum am Ostwall in Dortmund (both in 1971). He also participated in dOCUMENTA (6) in Kassel (1977), the XLV Venice Biennale (1993) and the Quadrennial in Rome (1973 and 2005).
GIANNI PIACENTINO. WORKS 1965-2006 opens 23 April at Michael Werner Gallery in London and remains on view through 20 June 2015. The exhibition will be accompanied by a full-color catalogue featuring a text by Andrea Bellini and an interview with the artist by Hans-Ulrich Obrist. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10AM to 6PM. For more information please contact the gallery at press@michaelwerner.com, visit www.michaelwerner.com or contact Sara Macdonald, Sutton PR at sara@suttonpr.com