Mimmo Roselli
lives in Bagno a Ripoli in Tuscany, Italy. He has also been working
in Santa Rosa in the Chaco region of Bolivia for many years where
he is founding an art school in the forest. His new piece "Drawing
Space" is sited in Red Hook, Brooklyn and will visually connect
these three geographic locations of present importance to the artist
by lines cut into the walls of the gallery.
The lines of the drawing and connection are incised into the wall
with a grinder. The cut drawn lines cover the walls, creating a magic
meeting space of ideas and aesthetics. To signify distances between
the places, small interruptions will be left between the arms of lines
and low, near the floor below the interruptions, numbers will indicate
geographic locations. The three engraved lines around the gallery
in the bright white space are missed at first, becoming evident when
visitors embrace the quiet of the "Drawing Space" and calm
the mind to see.
Mimmo Roselli writes about his work:
"In the last two three years I have been working on installations,
I call them, lines defining a space as environmental sculptures, pulled
from one wall to another wall, disappearing into the wall and appearing
from another; they are a sign of a link, representing solidarity between
peoples, the memory of the thousands of human destinies: meetings,
disagreements, embraces, perspiration, perseverance, toil, pain, love,
thought, omnipotence, poverty, filth, innocence.
For many years, I have dedicated my work to analyzing the concept
of the border: only using the glazing and layering technique, there
is maximum reduction of image. Lightness and transparent together
with rich of detail is produced through the stratification, multi-layering
of glazing color to reach something that is not a body of matter,
but a transparency with thickness, with weight, very light, that take
his own power by depth. The spaces, so built, are furrowed by signs
that cross like a walk in a vast landscape. So that there is no loss
of history, no loss of variety, no loss of complexity, even if the
is an apparent absence of things represented. This basic idea is linked
to the "borderline" concept: everything that is on the border
has the characteristic of being extremely unsettled. This situation
has an enormous capacity, the power of changing. The model considered
takes, on a collective dimension, the relationship with a "borderline"
environment. This gave rise to the pictorial production in an Indian’s
village of Bolivia, in a favela in Rio de Janeiro, in a home for the
old in Italy and to the projects of artistic intervention in the hospital.
The direction I see it heading is more and more to the necessity to
catch an absolute need of silence, but not a passive silence, on the
contrary very active and distinguished; for this reason my work is
a false minimal, because is rich of many little variations (the glazing
ground) and of vibrating courses, traced not with light hand using
brush or pencil, but using an edged blade that cut, but don't tear,
and that make the trip indelible (the sign). All that because I want
to re-affirm a kind of aesthetics of beauty, maybe not showy, not
unbecoming, subtle and sensual, that comes from that silence necessary
to be able to hear a possible dialogue between ethics and aesthetics."
Mimmo Roselli lives in Italy and works internationally
in Europe, the United States and South America. Recent projects include:
Lodz Biennale, Poland Oct.2004 (see the report by Christopher Lyon
in Art in America, March 2005); "Il paesaggio dell’acqua",
Ashaffenburg Museum, Germany 2003; "Round Thetis" (permanent
installation), Venezia Arsenale, Italy 2003; "Cosmogonia"
(oms), Bergamo Museum, Italy 2003, Heidelberg Museum, Germany 2002;
“Samadhi”, CAM, NYC 2002; "Der Berg", Heidelberg,
Germany 2002; "Terra Agricola". Open Air Museum Arterra,
Berndorf/Wien, Austria 2002; "Viajes a Bolivia" (oms), La
Paz Museum, Bolivia 2001; "Del paisaje" (oms), Buenos Aires
Centro Recoleta, Argentina 1999; Editor of the book "Art in Hospitals",
Gli Ori 1999, presented at IIC NY, Dec.1999.
Closing
Italian Dinner prepared by Mimmo
