Massimo Antonaci. L'Oro estratto dalla Caverna di Saturno
ML Fine Art is pleased to present the exhibition "L’Oro estratto dalla Caverna di Saturno", a solo show by Massimo Antonaci, scheduled from 25th January to 11th March 2022. The exhibition presents a series of recent works, created specifically for the gallery space.
Born in Grottaglie in 1958, Massimo Antonaci studied at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, where he earned a MFA in sculpture. In 1990 he moved to New York where he exhibited his works at the legendary John Weber Gallery. Antonaci's works have been exhibited at Massimo Valsecchi Gallery in Milan, at the Orestiadi Foundation in Gibellina and Tunis, at Nigel Greenwood Gallery in London and at Rossi Martino in Hong Kong. In 2012 the Collezione Maramotti in Reggio Emilia dedicated to the artist a retrospective, accompanied by texts by Mario Diacono and Marco Belpoliti.
In the mid-eighties he began the first experiments which led him to integrate the magmatic character and opacity of tar with the purity and transparency of glass. His path begins with black tar, continues in the early nineties with its opposite, white, and then transitions to the colors that compose light (yellow, red and blue). The next step is that of transparency: in 2000 color fades into the background and transparency becomes the one and only protagonist.
His language is made up of essential signs, circles and straight lines which intersect to create more complex geometric figures. There is always balance in the shapes, signs and colors used by the artist, an equilibrium which is easy to consider a ritual because it possesses the strength of the repetition.
The works on display are the result of a journey that seemed to have been closed more than thirty years ago but which is reopened with this new series of works that summarize and deepen the artist's research: the protagonist of the exhibition is gold, left pure and only veiled by the transparency of the glass. As stated by Marco Belpoliti, who wrote the introductory text to the exhibition, "Massimo Antonaci's art knows the darkness of black and the light of white, and gold. The latter is the color of reverence, the one that is granted to the gods and the divine, but also to oneself... The light of gold is warm and strong, it is round and pointed. It never blackens, never clears up, it remains identical to itself ".
"The works of Massimo Antonaci tempt us with their absoluteness, with their desire for purity and the absolute. The artist now walks on a tightrope suspended from the ground between one and the other trace of light. He wants us to glimpse a possible way to salvation. Art loses us, art saves us ".
