IAGA Contemporary Art is glad to present to the public the first solo exhibition signed by Albano Morandi (Salò, 1958) in the gallery venue, entitled Hidden on surface.

The exhibition project is composed of both iconic works of the artists and unreleased works, specially made for the occasion, consisting of an apparently contrasting diptic, where the patient stratifications of the chromatic grids overlap and thicken, thin and sink on the surface, accompanied by magmatic, dense backgrounds, where organic signs appear, planted in Wols’ nerve endings or smoothed along Fautrier’s cerebral partitions.

In this first exhibition that marks the beginning of the collaboration between Albano Morandi and the gallery there are the Fiori assenti con Gesti ludici, as the artist called this series, where precisely the two declines of his research – the sign-surrealistic and the Dadaist-readymade, between organic eflorescences and tablecloths stretched in the sun with imaginative potential — align, mirroring each other.
We also find known works and compositions of works that the artist exhibited in previous institutional moments, from Quadriennale in Rome, with Se solo potessimo cadere-Kamikaze, a large work in which the material veils of an intense yellow contrast with an intense green and encounter the elongated sign, almost a character in fact, at the moment of a fall or a reappearance from elsewhere.
We find two other extraordinary works, Cieli Estranei, which the artist did for the fiftieth anniversary of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001-Odissea nello spazio film, certainly drawing inspiration from the vertiginous temporal ellipse that combines the primordial animal gesture with the ether spinning of a space cell: after all, Cieli Estranei are organic models of stars that we will be able to see at some other time or perhaps just imagine them (exposed in the 2018 anthological exhibition at the Città della Pieve); there is a composition — again returns the warm and open grill until the flowering of the painting — of small Absent flowers (Fiori assenti) that were recently exhibited in the great anthology, for the 40 years of research, dedicated to Albano Morandi at Palazzo Martinengo Cesaresco in Brescia in 2021.
Other works complete the exhibition route, such as the Paesaggi e Interni in tempo di coronavirus (Intimate landscapes and interiors in time of Coronavirus), works that the artist carried out in the perimeter of the house, during the isolation period of 2020, working with reused materials that through small continuous colour touches and layers of other materials, make possible horizons of another place, backgrounds of an imagination that resists silence and fear.

Period

From Thursday, May 5 to Sunday June 5, 2022.

Opening

Thursday, May 5, 2022, h. 6:00 pm

Visiting hours

Tuesday –Saturday 2:00-6:00 pm

Exhibition venue

IAGA Contemporary Art, Strada Cloşca 9-11, Cluj-Napoca, RO

An exhibition organized by IAGA Contemporary Art, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Curator Ilaria Bignotti

In collaboration with Camilla Remondina

Press release

Fiore assente con gesto ludico (La via della maestria), 2022, mixed technique on ready-made, 121 x 120 cm