PalazzoPretorioMuseum is pleased to host the first solo exhibition in Prato by Simone Pellegrini. The exhibition is part of Pretorio Studio, the device that from 2016 opens to the interpretation of contemporary artists its own layered cultural heritage, over a period of over seven centuries.

Despite the intense exhibition activity of the Bolognese painter, the one at Palazzo Pretorio represents his first intervention in a museum of ancient and modern art. The results of this intimate and unusual rendez-vous will culminate in the production of a new big work, accompanied on show by the choir of some selected previous works made from 2012 to 2019, in formal and conceptual resonance.

Since 1996, Simone Pellegrini's work evokes archaic landscapes, cosmogonies and cartographies that recall ancient, mystical and pagan iconographies, in a temporal movement from possible demiurgic origins to the Middle Ages. His work is an archaeological dig in the collective and unconscious memory. Sometimes it has been referred to psychology and psychoanalysis, from Freud's theories of sexuality to Jung's archetypes.

Moreover, his technical and productive process seems to respect laws and rituals, from the rigid and recurrent triadic grammar of primary colors, to the choice of the monotype (from the ancient Greek, single imprint) a matrix created by the artist to make single pieces of the composition, used only one time and then destroyed: thus attributing to the work a character of uniqueness, unrepeatability and irreproducibility.

This kind of images, like the iconostasis of Pavel Florenskij on the "border between the visible world and the invisible world", finally find space in our time through their anachronism.

The search for the origin, as suggested by Walter Benjamin, never leads to genesis, rather to what springs from the becoming and the passing away, as a restoration, as a retrieval on one side and on the other, and for this very reason, as something imperfect and ajar”.

In the richness and mutability of its ancient, allegorical and sacred representations, the museum collection therefore seems to conceal and encourage this type of reading. In particular, the title refers to one of its most enigmatic frescoes: a wall of indecipherable signs probably dating back to the 14th century, traced by the defendants waiting to receive the sentence of the magistrate. In law, the expression "Res Judicata" means “definitive" but if pronounced in Italian, it seems to allude to its contrary, to what is still liable to judgment and discussion, evoking the past as rigidly defined or still "ajar".

The exhibition, installed in the first room on the ground floor where the visit of the Pretorio begins and ends, with its dense imagery implied, anticipates and completes the tour.

Curated by Veronica Caciolli.

 

Palazzo Pretorio Museum

Simone Pellegrini. Passed to Res Judicata

11 July - 8 September 2019

Vernissage: Thursday 10 July 2019, 7 pm

Cocktails will follow in the courtyard

 

Simone Pellegrini. Biography

Born in Ancona in 1972. He lives and works in Bologna, where he teaches Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts and where his studio is located. His artistic career began in 1996, during his formative years at the Fine Arts Academy of Urbino where he graduated in 2000. From 2003 with his personal "Rovi da far calce" he began his collaboration with the Cardelli & Fontana Gallery in Sarzana (SP), inaugurating a long season of following exhibitions and international fairs. In 2006 he presented his solo "Stille" at the Galerie Hachmeister in Münster which became his first gallery in Germany. Since 2015 he is also represented by Montoro12 Rome-Brussels and from 2017 he collaborates with the JamesFreemanGallery in London.

His solo exhibitions include: Sensorio Indiscreto, LabOratorio Degli Angeli, Bologna; Dishonesti corpi, San Leonardo Theatre, Bologna; Lacruna, Birthplace of Raphael, Accademia Raffaello, Urbino; Magnitude, Museum of Contemporary Art of Lissone; Villa Wessel Museum, Iserlohn, Germany; Agalmata, Spallanzani Museum and Galleria Bonioni Arte, Reggio Emilia. Among his upcoming shows, we mention his participation in the Grandi Formati exhibition at the GuggingMuseum in Vienna.

His works have been acquired by Bologna Fiere; by UniCredit Art Collection / Volker Feierabend Collection, Frankfurt am Main; by the MUSA, Civic collection of the design of Salò; by the CCPL - Cooperative Industrial Group; by Palazzo Forti, Verona; by the Collection of the Province of Reggio Emilia; and by the Civic Museums of Monza, Casa degli Umiliati.