At the opening on Friday September 22, at 6 pm, both the artist and curator will be present. At the heart of the exhibition project, as is customary for this space on the outskirts of Bergamo, the practice of drawing is explored as the key basis of production in contemporary visual arts.
On this occasion, Alessandro Pessoli proposes an installation specially designed for The Drawing Hall: the original images from the animated film Caligola will be on show for the first time, together creating an all-enveloping installation.
As always, the project is accompanied by a documentary produced by Yanzi srl in which director Marco Marcassoli films the artist at work, investigating the central role of drawing in his creative work.
Finally, to complete the project, Quaderno n.7 will feature a text by curator Matteo Mottin, drawing on a discussion with the artist concerning the time and context in which the work Caligola was created and the role of drawing in his broader artistic research.
The focus of the exhibition project is the drawings that make up the work Caligola, an animated film that Alessandro Pessoli worked on between 1999 and 2002. It is not a traditional story, not a film with a clearly defined narrative parable, but a work that comes across as a succession of elements and situations relating to reflections on life and the mystery of death.
The ten-minute film was presented in 2002 as part of the EXIT exhibition curated by Francesco Bonami at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, and consists of thousands of individual cells created using ink, tempera and bleach on paper, filmed digitally and edited in sequence using the stop-frame technique. Caligola is now to be found in the MAXXI collections in Rome and those of the SFMOMA in San Francisco.
In Alessandro Pessoli’s creative process, drawing is exploited as a tool for the elaboration of ideas, as a reference for the implementation of larger projects and as artwork in its own right. On the occasion of Sandrinus, these three meanings of drawing overlap: together with the film Caligola itself, the drawings are presented to the public for the first time in the exhibition, and the original plates are arranged in such a way as to occupy the entire exhibition space, creating a single body of work that may be likened to an immersive sculptural installation. The drawing itself becomes the main subject of the exhibition, in an arrangement that is intended to be a direct reference to the artist’s previous solo exhibitions such as Maelstorm (1992, Viafarini, Milan) and One Day to Live (1997 The Drawing Center, New York).
After last season’s solo exhibitions featuring Mastrovito, Arienti, Tosatti, Rabbia, Tweedy and Tibaldi, The Drawing Hall once more shows itself to be an innovative and necessary research space where artists and curators may discuss the issues linked to drawing and its multiple applications, both in the planning and preparatory stages for the creation of an artwork and its being a work of art in its own right.
About Alessandro Pessoli
Alessandro Pessoli (Cervia, 1963) has lived and worked in Los Angeles since 2010. After studying Visual Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, he moved to Milan in 1993, where he remained until 2008.
Today he is known for his paintings, drawings, sculptures and terracotta works, which often evoke figures with an apparently melancholic expression in indeterminate spaces characterised by a dreamlike narrative. His work is rich in references to art history, cinema and theatre, but also abounds with details from everyday life and popular culture, linked to comics and illustration.
His major solo and group exhibitions include: Fuori, La Quadriennale, Rome (2020); The Neighbors, MAN Nuoro IT 2016; Alessandro Pessoli – Project Room, Villa Paloma, NMNM Monaco, 2015; Alessandro Pessoli, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2012; and Ennesima, Triennale di Milano, 2015. His works may be found in the collections of some of the leading international museums: MoMA, New York; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; MoCa Los Angeles; MAXXI National Museum of 21st-Century Art, Rome; MIC Museo delle Ceramiche Faenza; and Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia.
About Matteo Mottin
Matteo Mottin is a curator and co-founder of the art project Treti Galaxie. His texts and interviews have been published in art magazines, including Artribune, Flash Art and Mousse. Since 2022, he has edited the puzzle column in Il Giornale dell’Arte.
About The Drawing Hall
The Drawing Hall is a place which was brought into being by Walter Carrera, visual designer and photographer, Marco Marcassoli, director and founder of Yanzi Srl, and the artist Andrea Mastrovito. This space aims to explore the role drawing plays in the contemporary art world, both in the design phase and on a formal level. The Drawing Hall stems from the need to integrate the critical line of contemporary Italian drawing and, over the course of its exhibition seasons – along with the contribution of artists, critics, curators and professionals in the field – intends to propose an outline of the Italian drawing scene, through the presentation of the work of some of the protagonists of the contemporary artworld who use this language.
All exhibitions are accompanied by the publication of a specific Quaderno (‘Notebook’) and a documentary by Marco Marcassoli focusing on the creative process that characterises each artist invited to exhibit.
For more information, please visit https://thedrawinghall.it/ and https://www.instagram.com/the_drawinghall/.
