Brescia, the clouds of artist Gabriele Picco in the rooms of Palazzo Martinengo Cesaresco Novarino

Clouds Never Say Hello is the title of the exhibition by Gabriele Picco (Brescia, 1974), a visual artist and writer who is exhibiting his art in his hometown in the solo show curated by Claudio Musso. The exhibition is scheduled from July 7 to September 18, 2022 in the spaces of Palazzo Martinengo Cesaresco Novarino. Organized in collaboration with Provincia di Brescia, Fondazione Provincia di Brescia Eventi and Fondazione Brescia Musei as part of the project Una Generazione di Mezzo, Clouds Never Say Hello spreads over two floors of the historic building and presents an articulated selection of new works that take viewers on an immersive journey into the author’s imagination.

Picco deals lightly with delicate themes such as death, sex, and the loneliness of contemporary man, often highlighting the contradictions of our society, and showing how life and the world are an immense visionary theater. Here, for example, is The wall, the room whose walls have been completely covered with 18 thousand Savoy cookies, an intervention by the artist that changes the sensory perception of the space and at the same time marks the access to the exhibition’s core. A decompression room full of childhood reminiscences, a way of fairy-tale escape not without, however, sinister elements, implicit in the wall is in fact the reference to incommunicability and all those walls that still inhabit the world.

Clouds, of Pasolinian memory, a symbol of lightness, suspension and poetry, are a recurring theme in Gabriele Picco’s work. Visible and present both in the history of art and in everyday life, at the same time so intangible and evanescent, they metaphorically represent the ambiguity and contradiction that reign in the imagination of the Brescian author. Two of the rooms of the exhibition are dedicated precisely to clouds. In one we find them on the roof racks of scale models of historical cars from the second half of the twentieth century. These are the cars that have become true icons, such as the Dyane or the Citroen DS, which follow the first work in this series entitled Cloud, which Picco made in 2005 with a real Fiat 500 as a permanent sculpture in the Madonie Park in Sicily.

In the other room the viewer will encounter, suspended in mid-air, what could be described as five small poems. Clouds of various colors carved in different marbles, from black portoro, to white statuary from Carrara, to blue Bahia, to pink from Portugal to golden stone. On each cloud will glimpse, in a subtle reference to tonal painting, a small stuffed bird of the same color as the rock. Here lightness and gravity meet, creating a visual and conceptual oxymoron.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a full-bodied monographic volume published by SKIRA in which hundreds of works produced by the artist between 1998 and 2022 will be collected through the filter of specific thematic sections, a specific section will be dedicated in the form of a cahier to drawing, and the textual part will consist of an essay signed by curator Claudio Musso, a conversation between the artist and Davide Ferri, biographical and bibliographical notes.

Brescia, the clouds of artist Gabriele Picco in the rooms of Palazzo Martinengo Cesaresco Novarino

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.