curated by Alberto Fiz
25.10.2000 - 27.11.2000
Giovanni Frangi, viaggio in Italia
curated by Alberto Fiz
The exhibition entitled Viaggio in Italia, curated by Alberto Fiz, was born from a project specifically designed for Galleria dello Scudo: each of the rooms constituted the stage of an itinerary through which the work entered into a close relationship with the themes of memory and figurative language. Therefore, a reflection was faced on the meaning of painting and its implications with the current world, in which traditional means of artistic expression are constantly threatened by photomechanical reproduction systems.
"I don't care about the description of the landscape" - explains Frangi - "but, if anything, to communicate the emotions I feel when I come into contact with reality. My aim is to use painting as a means of re-appropriating the existing". The sea, the hills and the plains thus become the pretext for developing a mental vision of nature through works that develop the idea of movement within them, as if they were fragments of a universe seen through the window of a moving train. From Boccioni to de Pisis to Schifano, Frangi's painting moves in absolute freedom, following the paths of art history on the basis of original and highly personal contaminations.
This exhibition therefore represents a turning point in the artist's search for new formal solutions, in which figurative ideas and abstraction become complementary elements within a visual system free from conditioning. "The language of Frangi" - says Alberto Fiz- "comes from painting and represents a continuous challenge towards the usual image. His paintings are pure visions, moods that leave traces on the canvas, almost unbeknownst their author."
Born in Milan in 1959, he began painting at a very young age. In 1982 Giovanni Frangi graduated from the Brera Academy and exhibited in a group show at the Rotonda in via Besana. The following year he held his first solo show at the Galleria La Bussola in Turin. In 1992 he exhibited the cycle La fuga di Renzo in the Sala del Cenacolo in the Chamber of Deputies in Montecitorio.