Between Emptiness and Reason

Between Emptiness and Reason

1 March – 30 April 2012

galleria artesilva presents the solo exhibition of Stefano Turrini “TRA VUOTO E RAGIONE”, recent papers and sculptures by the Tuscan artist. In this exhibition Turrini offers large papers and “light” sculptures: painting and sculpture as present-day means of artistic communication.

Painting is declined into its primary elements, such as large-format paper as the support for acrylic colours of industrial use and, new for him, the addition of an anomalous element such as aluminium wire — a painting, then, that contains an unusual material.

The sculptures offered are metal cages in iron made up of aluminium meshes soaked in and run through by pourings of colour which, in their movement, take on three-dimensional value before they solidify.

In this exhibition painting evokes sculpture and sculpture loses its heaviness in order to use elements of painting such as colour.

The exhibition is introduced by an intense text by the poet and publisher Roberto Dossi.

Short Biography

Stefano Turrini was born in Figline Valdarno on 6 June 1951. In 1955 his family moved to Florence; after compulsory schooling he took the diploma of maestro d’arte at the Istituto d’Arte in Florence (1971). He then attended the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, where he graduated from the school of painting (1980).

His first experiences of painting go back to the last years of the sixties (1967/68).

In 1976 he began, inside the Psychiatric Hospital of Florence, to take care of “La Tinaia”, the centre for expressive activities attended by some of the hospital’s patients (1976/1978), which had come into being only a year earlier (1975) and which would in time acquire international renown in the field of Art Brut. This experience, highly formative in human terms but also for his artistic research, would be taken up again later (1991/1996).

His initial interest was directed towards painting but has widened over time to sculpture, to the production of artist’s books in a single copy or in small series (worth noting in this field are the significant collaborations with Alessandra Borsetti Venier, Mario Luzi, Eugenio Miccini, Alda Merini, Vito Riviello, Alberto Casiraghi, Roberto Dossi), touching on installation and performance, through to the more recent production of jewellery.

From 1980 his exhibiting activity began with a solo exhibition at the galleria Inquadrature in Florence. From that date the exhibitions followed one another over the years and, to cite only the most important, we would recall in 1981 and ’86 the galleria Fumagalli in Bergamo, in 1992 the galleria Spaziotempo in Florence, in 1999 Prato with the Comune and with the bookshop Soprattutto Libri, and then in 2000 Pontassieve with “Barbagianna – Una Casa Per l’Arte”. In 2010 at Albissola Marina, in the studio that was Lucio Fontana’s, he presented his latest works, “Trappole per il Colore”.

The group exhibitions too have been numerous and, again to recall the most important: 1982 in Bilbao, 1985 in San Giminiano, 1986 in Paris at the Grand Palais, in 1987 in Switzerland at Chur and Zurich, 1988 in Paternò, 1989 at the Istituto Francese in Florence, in 1992 at the Museo Casabianca in Malo, in 1994 at Colonnata di Carrara inside a marble quarry, in 1998 in the Museo di Palazzo Sarcinelli at Conegliano Veneto, and then in 2000 with the exhibition “Contro la Pena di Morte” at the Fortezza da Basso in Florence. In 2003 “Golem, i Linguaggi Della Scultura Oggi” in Ravenna and “Pittura Aniconica” in Mantua at the Casa del Mantenga in 2008. In 2010 at the Mart in Rovereto he presented, in “Baualmart”, a sculpture made with four hands together with Marco Marchiani Mavilla.