The Giacomelli / Burri exhibition is underway in Rome at MAXXI, from 3 December 2021 to 6 February 2022. Photography and material imagery. A reflection on the human condition through the representation of nature. Giacomelli’s photographs enter into dialogue with Burri’s graphic and multi-material works.
This seemed to us a very interesting proposal to report to you. Between the two artists there was a deep esteem and friendship as well as a commonality of expressive intentions. There is a reference between the organic nature of Burri’s works, with its cracks and burns and the abstract geometries of the aerial shots of Giacomelli’s natural landscapes, which he considered portraits; the furrows in the earth, the plowed fields, the contrasts of the sky with the ground, evoke in the observer considerations on man’s work, on his relationship with nature, on impermanence and the passage of time.
The energy of the material, generator of the landscapes proposed by the two artists, opens to reflections on the external and internal space. In this sense, we venture an assonance with the landscapes evoked in the tales of a certain “science fiction of inner space” by writers such as James Ballard, in which the contrast with often arid and changed scenarios is confused with the inner reality of its protagonists.
The real confrontation and dialogue between the two artists, and their elective affinity, is the idea behind this exhibition. By Mario Giacomelli we find the series Metamorphosis of the Earth, Awareness of Nature, Stories of the Earth, created between the end of the 1950s and the 1980s. Burri is present with some graphic works such as the Combustioni 1965 series, Cretti 1971, Sacchi, Combustioni on paper and wood, and a precious white Cretto.
