Following the important experience in Venice, with three exhibitions and collateral events for Heart Modulation, Galleria Grossetti reopens its Milanese venue in Piazza XXV Aprile with a solo exhibition by Rodolfo Aricó. The exhibition focuses on one of the essential phases of Aricò’s artwork: precisely the time when the artist began to perceive the canvas not just as a tool but also as a three-dimensional structure.
The exhibition falls into the object painting¸ yet within a specific time of Aricò’s art research, between 1967 and 1970, that reached its climax in 1968 (1) when the artist, processing the canvas’ objectification, created the series of artworks called Scatola (Box). These artworks brought Aricò to explore the pictorial art from a more substantial point of view, marked by the canvas’ physical space, which will become shaped from the Mid-Sixties onwards. The exhibition revolves around a selection of germinal and unexpected artworks, anticipating the shaped canvas – all belonging to the Grossetti Collection and collected during the long-lasting collaboration (1958-2001) between Galleria Grossetti and the artist. The peculiar choice of matching object-paintings and previous creations, definitely less renowned, enables to understand the different transformations distinguishing Aricò’s artistic path. We will therefore be able to observe the element of the tail – the escape assembling the box – preliminary work for modular axonometries and future visionary perspectives. Actually during Aricò’s entire artistic career, the research is not only focused on painting as a way to draw on a two-dimensional surface, but is also implies a three-dimensional survey and a specific structuralism, constantly fluctuating from a visual to an illusionistic-perspective space.