Frames of kisses sewn together like a patchwork blanket. A still image of the most affectionate of gestures between two people that the artist in the period of the lockdown stole from the only windows open to the world: television, computer screens and smartphones. It is called Baci rubati / Covid 19, the exhibition by Omar Galliani from tomorrow at the Tornabuoni Arte Gallery on Lungarno Cellini. A conceptual review that refers to the difficult months of closure and social distancing but also symbolic starting with the city chosen for the “first” of the exhibition, that is Florence, now proposed as the beginning of the “new Renaissance”.
The impact with the exhibition is already powerful at the entrance where a large panel six meters long dominates the space on the left wall next to the piano. It brings together 60 frames of kisses, which Galliani retouched with graphite, the technique that made him famous in the international art scene. «They are the fragments of an orphaned everyday life of lips and breath, of caresses not given or received, of a latent darkness that has imposed itself in our daily life in a silent dramatic crescendo», explains the artist. “By observing the paintings – points out Sonia Zampini, who signs the introductory text of the catalog – we see how the rush of vision is expressed in kisses, hugs, reciprocity that arise as a response to that longing that forced separation has suffocated”. Here is the art that raises its head to give shape to negation. A work that is also tender as the most intimate tenderness that recalls in the memory the moving collage of kisses in the film by Giuseppe Tornatore, Nuovo Cinema Paradiso. They were censored kisses (they were the years after World War II), also stolen and then stitched together in a poetic short film.
The exhibition, open until 2 July, offers other works on the subject, always in black / white and retouched in pencil. Roberto Casamonti, owner of the gallery explains: «In the saddest moment Omar Galliani found freedom and serenity. It is a seductive museum work. The artist highlighted the need and importance of recovering that dimension of human communion which becomes physical expression, a spontaneous and natural response to an urgency, to a state of necessity when these needs are denied ». «We see multiple identities described in a great overall vision that invests our gaze – explains Sonia Zampini – The works are placed halfway between reality and desire, between will and impossibility. To better highlight this flow between two opposite conditions, Galliani made the subjects as evanescent as if they were dreams using graphite. Nape, mouth, forehead, temple and other details share the limit of their shape when they come into contact with the other ». “Now that the time of kisses and hugs is suspended between us and other desired bodies, where the skin and the time of caresses has been interrupted, we look for a renewed caress in the breathless daily life of images that removes the time of absence and refound the desire for us, Galliani notes. Fiat Lux! », Concludes Galliani. Catalog edited by Sonia Zampini, Omar Galliani and Roberto Mussapi.
May 12, 2021 | 14:53
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