The exhibition of the artist in the headquarters of the Bank of Asti tells the city (and its desire to start again) through a gallery of icons that have also made its history
They are faces told through their shadows linked together (even physically) by a thin red line that underlines the strength of the protagonists and that wants to transmit energy, a very strong energy almost necessary in a moment in which it is necessary to resume living, working and (for artists to exhibit). Six portraits of characters that with their own existence have had or have a close and almost symbolic link with Milan and in particular with via Manzoni: in addition to Alessandro Manzoni, to whom the street is named, Carla Fracci (I knew her well, I would have liked you to see it), Maria Callas (The portrait that perhaps I love the most), Roberto Bolle, Giorgio Armani, and most recently Marianna Leyva who inspired Manzoni the famous character of the nun of Monza and who was born in Palazzo Marino, currently the seat of the Municipality.
Luna Berlusconi with the exhibition Via Manzoni
(curated by Cristina Gilda Artese as part of the project Gilda’s wall_Art for value) which opens to the public on 9 September (until 10 October) in the headquarters of the Bank of Asti wants to pay homage to one of the most representative streets of the city through the iconic and representative faces of history, theater, dance, fashion but also of the imaginative. A tribute to Milan, a city of culture but also entrepreneurship, in the name of creativity and beauty. On display, alongside the six Milanese-style portraits, two works dedicated to the world of classical dance and three portraits of characters of Russian culture, specifically the baritone Dmitry Aleksandrovič Chvorostovskij, the writer and playwright Mikhail Afanas’evič Bulgkov and Majja Michajlovna Pliseckaja, considered the most important dancer of modern times, representative of this particular research of the artist around characters that are symbolic and identifying a specific culture and identity history of a people.
To act as glue first of all those faces that the artist (painter, but also ceramist and sculptress) reworks using a mix of enamel and magnet applied on a poplar board (a material that comes from her experience with Gino De Dominicis of whose last assistant was still very young). I love the material – he explains – and my black very close to the very deep one of certain portraits by Helmut Newton. But why precisely these six characters and not others? Because unlike those who today are called influencers through their faces they tell their own identity, their own thoughts, one’s own existential choice. In short, they are icons (in the next exhibition scheduled at the Spazio Santa Marta, also in Milan, from 18 October alongside the six protagonists of Via Manzoni there will be classics such as Steve Jobs and Gianni Agnelli but also the more recent portraits of Mario Draghi and Raffaella Carr (all played on white). Icons that have become not by chance, but thanks to what they have managed to do with their own doing, with their work and with their lives.
September 8, 2021 (change September 8, 2021 | 15:03)
© Time.News