Casey Kaplan gallery in New York is hosting an exhibition “Giorgio Griffa: The 1980s,” coinciding with the artist’s major UK survey “A Continuous Becoming.”Artist Georgio Griffa is marking his third solo with Casey Kaplan with this exhibition. The Turin-based artist is known for his abstract paintings on raw, unstretched canvas, linen and burlap, which has placed him in the pantheon of celebrated Italian artists of his time. He has been one of the participating artists in “Viva Arte Viva,” the main exhibition of the 57th edition of the Venice Biennale in 2017. Prior to that, in 2015-16, he was the subject of a traveling retrospective presented across institutes like Fundação de Serralves in Porto, Portugal; Fondazione Giuliani in Rome, Italy; Bergen Kunsthall in Bergen, Norway; and Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève in Genève, Switzerland.The exhibition focuses on the artist’s practice during the period between 1980 and 1989, which highlights a transformative phase in his career where minimalist ideals of the previous decade were infused with a raw and expressive treatment of surface, color and line. Intermittently inspired by the work of Henri Matisse and motifs from Roman frescoes of the city of Pompeii, this transition in his style placed him outside of the dominant 1980s international art movement, Neo Expressionism, and Transavanguardia — the prevailing figurative style in his native Italy. The works curated for this show were unfolded and seen for the first time since their making at the artist’s studio in Turin. “The paintings are now awake from having been asleep,” said the artist while selecting them for the show, referring to the physical and conceptual process undertaken by himself, where the physical act of folding and unfolding of the canvas becomes a method of both normalizing and activating it. The unstretched canvases on view are folded into precise sections while stored or traveling, creating geometrical creases that evolve over time, enriching the overall composition as well as highlighting the texture of the medium’s materiality.The exhibition is on view through February 17, 2018, at Casey Kaplan, 121 West 27th Street, New York, NY 10001, USA.For details, visit http://www.blouinartinfo.com/galleryguide/casey-kaplan/overviewClick on the slideshow for a sneak peek at the exhibition.
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