Mazzoleni is pleased to present the exhibition AGOSTINO BONALUMI. Shaped Metal from 9 March–29 April 2022 (extended until 15 May), in collaboration with Archivio Bonalumi. This project inaugurates Mazzoleni's new gallery space in 15 Old Bond Street as well as a series of shows titled 'Focus on', a format delving into a range of key aspects of the European post-war period.
The title Shaped Metal refers to the metal sheets series that Bonalumi created in the late 1980s using a 'pleating' process with an enamel coating. These wall-mounted works represent the highest point of Bonalumi's prolific career. Characterised by strictly rectilinear rhythmic structures, they are representative of the artist's explorations of materials and their expressive potential. In this regard, historian, curator and critic of contemporary art Francesca Pola writes: 'This new approach to matter, in which also the luminous dimension given by the transparency was fundamental, was taken up again in an extraordinary cycle that is today much less well known and which is strongly tied to the artist's sculptural investigations: that of the 'lamiere' (started in the late 1980s) in which Bonalumi experimented the use of enamelled sheets for wall-hung works that exploited the ductile potentialities of the material in order to articulate the form in complex and elusive surfaces' (From F. Pola, Bonalumi. Sculptures, Numerozeroeditore, Milan, 2014).
A pioneer of the post-war Italian avant-garde, Agostino Bonalumi (1935–2013) started his career in the Milanese artistic environment of the Brera district, initially collaborating with other artists, such as Piero Manzoni and Enrico Castellani. Between the late 1950s and early 1960s, Bonalumi had developed his personal style and methodological approach with a series of works featuring extroflexions of the canvas, gradually refining the dialectic between volume and void, concave and convex. These experimentations with a combination of traditional and industrial materials—such as canvas, fibreglass, and metal—reached maturity in the following decade, consolidating him as a leading figure on the contemporary art scene.
The display offers the viewer an insightful understanding of the 'lamiere', a specific production of shaped metals, which highlights the artist's visual perception and his exploration of the space. The light reflects on the shiny surface of the pleated enamelled sheets creating spatial rhythm in the red, white, blue, black, green, yellow, and orange monochromes. A brochure with a text by Francesca Pola will accompany the exhibition.
Press release courtesy Mazzoleni.
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