Brescia hosts Agostino Ferrari's exhibition investigating the past two decades of research

From April 5 to May 5, 2024, the Museo Diocesano in Brescia is hosting a retrospective dedicated to Agostino Ferrari (Milan, Italy, 1938), which analyzes the last two decades of the Milanese artist’s artistic research. The exhibition, curated by Elena Di Raddo and Mariacristina Maccarinelli, presents 13 paintings and 10 ceramics, which recount the evolution of the sign, the focal theme of Ferrari’s artistic research, but only through a selection of works ranging from the early 2000s to the present. The title of the exhibition, Oltre la soglia del SEGNO (Beyond the Threshold of Sign), recalls how all of Agostino Ferrari’s poetics has developed precisely around the sign, characterizing his most peculiar expressive code, and then renewing and transforming itself over time.

Starting in the early 1960s with the investigation of a primordial sign-writing, advanced in the context of the Cenobio group, continued with the inclusion of the spatial and theatrical dimension as another supporting element. In the 1970s, Ferrari began to focus on the psychological values of color until he made theAutoritratto, the only installation of his career; later his attention returned to focus on the pictorial sign that became a narrative, and then evolved in the space of the canvas thanks also to the use of black sand, until it emerged from the surface objectifying itself.

The exhibition opens with paintings from the series entitled Beyond the Threshold, begun in 2002, which confront the great questions of existence. Ferrari delves into the relationship that is established between the “written” surface, where the sign narrative is visible, and the “tear”: the tear shows how thin the thickness of the support is and, at the same time, the depth of absolute blackness, which symbolically takes on the value of what is not knowable. This attention to spatial investigation present in Ferrari, as also in his master Lucio Fontana, is manifested in the desire to give the viewer the possibility of going with his gaze beyond the canvas, opening up a mysterious, spiritual, infinite universe. In the same room we also find some later works from the series Interno-Esterno. Here the sign takes strength and space within the composition, moves freely, begins to invade the planes of the surfaces present while still remaining a sign-pictorial. The second room is dedicated to Pro-sign SEMS (Space-Energy-Matter-Sign) and ProSign "New-Signs," titles that define the creations made since 2023. These works describe the latest outcomes of Ferrari’s research, where the only absolute protagonist is the sign that appears from the blackness below, manifests itself on the canvas in all its power, and then transforms itself into a plastic sign that emerges from the surface invading the surrounding physical space.

The outdoor space of the museum hosts a section dedicated to white or black ceramics, in which the three-dimensionality of the pictorial research dialogues with the material. The exhibition route continues with the immersive room that presents a video installation curated by Francesco Pio Bellisario, a student of DAMS for the Arts at the Catholic University. The project, created especially for this appointment with the desire to deepen the figure of Agostino Ferrari, consists of three screens one central and two lateral. The main screen is dedicated to an interview conceived and carried out ad hoc for the project; the side ones host images the works in scroll.

The review concludes with the video interview A Piccoli passi nell’Arte. Agostino Ferrari, the result of research carried out by students as part of the Laboratory of Contemporary Art History, DAMS course for the Arts, at the Catholic University. It is a portrait of the artist that is told through the questions of the students, who thus have the opportunity to critically investigate and reflect on the visual language by exercising study, writing, scriptwriting, image research and art historical content, editing, and post-production.

The catalog, which contains critical texts by the curators, is produced in collaboration with the JUS Museum in Naples.

In 1961 Agostino Ferrari exhibited for the first time in a solo show at the Pater Gallery in Milan, in an Italian pictorial climate largely dominated by figurative and informal painting. Decisive for the subsequent developments of his artistic research was his meeting with Arturo Vermi, Angelo Verga, Ettore Sordini, Ugo La Pietra and Alberto Lùcia, which marked the birth, in 1962, of the Gruppo del Cenobio. The intent was to defend painting through a minimum symbolic experimentation, identified in the Sign. In the wake of these insights, between 1962 and 1964, Ferrari’s Sign was transformed into a kind of non-signifying writing: this was the time of the series of works called Sign-Writing and Tales. When Pop Art appeared in America, Agostino Ferrari’s interest in this new form of painting took him to New York for six months in two successive seasons, between 1964 and 1966. During these long stays he met Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Billy Apple, and Jasper Johns. His series of Labyrinths, paintings focused on the description of plastic concepts, is influenced by these experiences, though far from his vision. Between 1966 and 1967, Ferrari began the series entitled Teatro del segno (Theater of the Sign), works that set out to overcome the two-dimensionality of the painting and transforming themselves into painting-objects. Almost contemporary is the series Total Form. These are paintings that break the perimeter limit of canvas and panel and manage to dialogue both internally, between fragment and total form, and externally, in a harmonious balance between forms, pictorial signs and colors (white and blue). The artist’s research at this time is predominantly plastic in character, as Lucio Fontana also wrote in 1967 in his presentation to a Ferrari exhibition. Always comparing Sign with Forms and Colors and seeking a dialogue between these elements, Ferrari arrives at the creation of Self-Portrait (1975). The work consists of a large walkable spiral punctuated by 14 painted wooden panels (m 1.50 x 2.00) for a total path of 21 meters. Also from 1975 is the elaboration ofAlphabet, which Ferrari presented in America at the Dallas Gallery of Modern Art. After an interlude during which Ferrari returned to conceiving works-objects, again concerning the Sign, in 1981 he began a new research in which the Sign resumed decisively scriptural character and had memory as its object of investigation(Recovered Letters). This phase ends with a period of “refounding,” in which Sign becomes totalizing and begins to express itself in works even of large dimensions: Events, N.E.S.O -North East South West, Palimpsests, Fragments and finally the Maternities. After these experiences, Ferrari began to confront the work of Lucio Fontana with works entitled Beyond the Threshold. In them, a split in the canvas is pictorially represented, a black area that locates an unknown space, similar to what Fontana had identified with the cuts and holes. For Ferrari, however, this new space is to be “reached” but, on the contrary, a place from which to start in order to arrive at a known and distinctly perceived space. Subsequent works, with the explanatory title Interior/Exterior, continue in the groove traced, similarly to the 4D sculpture series. To the most recent production belong the ProSegni. In the title “Pro” stands for “in favor of the Sign” and contains a play on words with the theatrical term “Proscenium,” with open reference to past experiences condensed in the Teatro del Segno. Agostino Ferrari lives and works in Milan.

For all information, you can visit the official website of the Diocesan Museum.

Pictured: Agostino Ferrari, Interno / Esterno (2011), acrylic + sand on canvas, cm. 150x150

Brescia hosts Agostino Ferrari's exhibition investigating the past two decades of research

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