(August 28, 2017) “Everything, even if it is already seen, must be re-examined, re-watched. Everything is here in front of us, yet this ‘being in front of’ must be deepened with simplicity and wonder, with sweetness, poetry, new energy, aware that every shift in our gaze, every beat of our lashes, every focus of our eyes can tell something fun and new: urgent, necessary, beautiful”. Words by the artist Corrado Veneziano, who is preparing to land with his works in China. On Saturday, September 2 (with a preview for the authorities on Friday, September 1), at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Lanzhou will be inaugurated the exhibition “Segni”. Strongly desired by Wu Weidong, the director of this exhibition space, the Veneziano exhibition, scheduled until October 10 (free admission, from 9am to 6pm), one of the few personal hosted by the museum: in fact, the most esteemed Chinese National Gallery in Contemporary Art – known to host the works of the major Chinese artists and to host the works of living artists, with particular attention to the international ones – rarely allocates their rooms to single artists. “We have the enormous pleasure of having the Italian artist Corrado Veneziano in Lanzhou, involved in a very personal exhibition at the National Gallery. Thanks to his 40 works”, said Wu Weidong, “professionals, collectors and art enthusiasts in Lanzhou, Gansu and China will have the opportunity to enjoy the complexity of contemporary Italian art. We are certain – he added – that the exhibition will have a success ever recorded before for the provocative style, novelty and beauty of the paintings presented. “On display in China forty canvases, half of them large, made of oil, acrylic or mixed technique. Subject of his work is a visual universe known to us all and represented, from time to time, by symbols, daily signs, chains and commercial networks brands, logos related to the world of economy and industry, bar codes from every business place and, last but not least, the great canvases of the fifteenth century, so well-known and admired to be also a sort of brand, reproducible and repeated. Starting from all these, Veneziano chooses to reverse and recombine every subject. Barcodes identifying books become gates, flower stems, olive branches on which the artist prints western and eastern scriptures, ancient and modern alphabets, mysterious graphics; The QR becomes a mosaic, “Coca Cola” bottles become solitaire and thoughtful women whose features are hidden by the burqa. Even the masterpieces by Michelangelo, Masaccio, Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, the most fascinating authors of the history of Western art, undergo a transformation by the artist’s hand that turns the “Last Supper” into a sacred and advertised fast food, replaces The “apple” of the Old Testament with a more technological “Apple.” (Red)
