Giulia Cenci | Giorgio Griffa | Printing Dreams
Tre mostre.
Comunicato stampa
Two special projects created for Noire by Giulia Cenci and Giorgio Griffa, two artists with distinct histories and artistic languages. Special editions to be leafed through slowly, offering an intimate and quiet encounter with their work. The exhibition does not seek similarities; instead, it allows each work to retain its own voice, so that the differences between them, brought together, illuminate one another.
As is often the case with Giulia Cenci’s work, a literary reference runs through her creative process: Chiodi, the poetry collection by Agota Kristof, accompanied the making of these drawings and gave the portfolio its title. Against the black background of the 15 plates that make up the work, self-portraits emerge as if suspended in darkness, in which the female physiognomy dissolves into the head of a wolf, the human’s alter ego, free and untamed. Animals also surface from the dark, echoing the paintings of Goya, Rego and Vincenzo Simone, as do floating eyes, fragments of gazes from the frescoes of Piero della Francesca. The series of these pages offers an intimate and direct look at Giulia Cenci’s work, exploring the same technique of fragmentation and void found in her sculptures.
Canone Aureo 980 is the title of Giorgio Griffa’s portfolio, which grew out of the artist’s reflections on the golden ratio and the dialogue between art and science. At the heart of the project lies the golden number, 1.618…, whose sequence has continued for over 2,300 years without ever reaching an end. Fascinated by its irrational nature, Griffa has chosen it as a means of expression, turning it into a metaphor for the continuous becoming of art and the limits of reason. The use of an irrational number, infinite by nature, evokes boundless spaces and suspended time: a symbol of moving beyond reason and immersing oneself in the unknown.
Printing Dreams tells the story of Noire’s encounters with some of the most influential artists on the international contemporary scene. The exhibition brings together a selection of works that explores the breadth of Noire’s editorial research: different techniques, materials and languages intertwine in a journey spanning more than four decades of experimentation. It ranges from Giuseppe Penone’s iconic frottages, which in Trentatré erbe (1989) transfer onto paper the imprints of 33 different herbs, to the conceptual rigor of Sol LeWitt, represented by Brushstrokes: Horizontal and Vertical (1996); from the painterly, material quality of Peter Halley, with Blue Prison (2024), to the sculptural presence of Valentin Carron, with the bronze Toile (2021). Works by Carla Accardi, Giovanni Anselmo, John Armleder, Alan Charlton, Joan Jonas, Mario Merz, Sarah Morris, Jonathan Monk, Giulio Paolini, David Tremlett and Gilberto Zorio complete the exhibition, testifying to an even broader body of research.
Printing Dreams is the story of a collaboration with artists built over time, through dialogue and the search for new forms to give shape to their ideas.
