Gian Maria Tosatti: NOw/here

From 23 February to 30 July 2023, Pirelli HangarBicocca presents “NOw/here,” the solo exhibition by Gian Maria Tosatti , one of the most interesting Italian artists in recent years.

Two impressive painting cycles: with these new textured, abstract, large-format works, the artist who represented Italy in 2022 at the 59th Venice Biennale, offers the public a “sentimental retrospective,” revealing his painting practice for the first time.   

Gian Maria Tosatti’s (Rome, 1980; lives and works in Naples) exhibition consists of two cycles of paintings presented for the first time at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Portraits (2022) and NOw/here (2023). These large-scale works are set up in close relationship with the architecture of Pirelli HangarBicocca, creating moments of interaction and contrasting situations. Portraits comprises four gold and rust paintings on iron panels, assembled and installed on tube and clamp structures. On the other hand, the NOw/here series takes the form of ten large fields of graphite and white charcoal on canvas suspended from the ceiling.

This new body of work condenses several recurring concepts of Gian Maria Tosatti’s research over the past two decades and embodies a dialogue with the Zeitgeist (Spirit of the time), resonating with the feelings, characteristic of the artist’s generation. For Tosatti, the exhibition becomes an opportunity to address aspects of current events as well as the human condition at such a difficult moment in time, in a society poised between catastrophe and evolution. These works are also conceived as “mirrors,” open questions that directly confront the visitor.

Through their material qualities, the paintings reconnect with the very moment when reality reveals itself, as evoked by the exhibition title “NOw/here,” whose elements can be read individually, as “now” and “here,” or sequentially, as in “nowhere.” In “NOw/here” Tosatti seems to confront History, interpreting it not as a chain of events, but as a feeling, while trying to capture the moment to which we belong.

The lighting of the exhibition “Now/here” has been conceived by Pasquale Mari, a renowned light designer and director of photography who works in cinema, theatre and art.

Source: Pirelli HangarBicocca