Sergio Lombardo's unpredictable and nonsensical new faces on display in Arezzo

From November 12, 2021 to January 23, 2022, the spaces of the association Le Nuove Stanze in Arezzo will host a solo exhibition of one of the greatest living Italian artists, Sergio Lombardo (Rome, 1939): titled Faces and curated by Simone Zacchini, the exhibition, produced in collaboration with Magonza editore and 1/9unosunove arte contemporanea, presents a selection of unpublished pictorial works derived from Lombardo’s recent research on so-called “stochastic faces” (2021). These large-scale canvas works (210 x 150 cm) represent the latest fruit of Lombardo’s in-depth study since the early 1980s on so-called “stochastic painting.” Over these four decades the artist has invented numerous algorithms for the creation of stochastic forms, and it is through the application of one of these (the V-RAN method, also known as “rain of dots”) that what he calls unpredictable stochastic faces are created.

Lombardo starts with three minimal prototypes of geometrized faces (neutral and devoid of any expression) that, from generation to generation, undergo new random deformations again and again, until the faces are transformed into something monstrous and perturbing. Every deformation, however, stems from chance: holding fast to the principle of expressive abstinence, which has informed his entire career since his beginnings in the late 1950s, Lombardo does not intervene with arbitrary choices to seek more or less “beautiful” or “ugly” forms, but relies on randomly drawn numbers. His aim is not to imitate real faces, but to create faces that are unpredictable, meaningless, nonexistent in nature, and out of scale. The result aims to be alien to human imagination and reality, to stimulate in the viewer a process of projective perception based on the elaboration of interpretations that depend on his or her individual experience.

Like all of Lombardo’s previous works, including the canvases in the Hazard series (2019-2020), three of which are being presented in the exhibition for the first time, these painted faces (in both black and white and color) are also effective in that they are able to evoke the greatest number of different unconscious interpretations. According to Lombardo, if the faces ended up imitating realistic expressions, they would inhibit the observer’s arbitrary projections and force him or her to always take refuge in interpretations that are very similar to each other, contravening one of the cardinal principles of eventualism, an aesthetic theory of which the Roman artist was the founder and continues to be the main exponent. Also on view will be the Quilting portfolio (2019, Mainz), featuring three silkscreens by Lombardo. The exhibition will be accompanied by a valuable volume published by Mainz (which is also working on a collection of the artist’s writings, currently being published) with an unpublished text by Sergio Lombardo and an essay by Simone Zacchini.

Sergio Lombardo

Sergio Lombardo is the founder of eventualist theory, from which an artistic and theoretical movement based on experimental methods was born. His work is characterized by programmatic discontinuity and can be grouped into distinct periods or cycles. He made his debut as an artist in the early 1960s along with the protagonists of the Scuola di Piazza del Popolo, exhibiting at Galleria La Tartaruga in Rome with Kounellis, Schifano, Festa, Angeli, Mambor, Tacchi, Ceroli and Pascali. To these years date the pictorial series: Monochromes (1958-61), Typical Gestures (1961-63), Colored Political Men (1963-64). Moving away from painting, he began to collaborate with La Salita Gallery in Rome, where he exhibited Supercomponibili (1965-68), Sfera con Sirena (1969) and Progetti di Morte per Avenaenamento (1970).

His research in the 1970s turned first to performance(Concerti Aleatori) and then to scientific analysis of the artistic phenomenon(Experimenti di Psicocinesi). Turning his studio into a laboratory of experimental psychology, in 1977 he founded the Centro Studi Jartakor in Rome, whose organ of scientific dissemination is the Rivista di Psicologia dell’Arte. In 1979 he invented the Tachistoscopic Mirror with stimulation to dream, from whose experimental results was born the idea of a return to painting on a scientific-mathematical basis. In fact, from 1980 Lombardo began a complex research on Stochastic Painting based on the definition of mathematical algorithms and randomization programs capable of creating nonsense forms with high evocative power: TAN, SAT and V-RAN methods, and in more recent years Tiling, Quilting and Hazard. The “unpredictable stochastic faces” (2021) are the latest result of this long research.

The New Rooms

Le Nuove Stanze is a cultural association established with the intention of promoting contemporary art projects and at the same time involving different interlocutors, critics, historians and scholars but also art lovers and a wider audience composed of school children. Alongside the conception and production of contemporary art exhibitions, Le Nuove Stanze also organizes debates, conferences, book presentations and workshops, along with educational activities, as well as publishing volumes and catalogs in line with the projects developed. Dialogue and collaboration between different institutions, artists and insiders is the aim pursued by the association to ensure that contemporary art events are disseminated, with special attention to their connection with the territory. Le Nuove Stanze is made up of a Board of Directors composed of Chiara Sarteanesi (curator of the Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri), Marco Pierini (director of the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria in Perugia and curator of contemporary art) and Moira Chiavarini (president of the association, art historian and editor).

A scientific committee within the association, and elected by it, evaluates and proposes any initiative in line with the goals and objectives of New Rooms. Marco Pierini’s direction is followed by the presence of Alessandro Sarteanesi (director of the publishing house Mainz, photographer and curator of exhibitions), Alberto Fiz (scholar, critic and curator of contemporary art), Tanino Bonifacio (art historian and also cultural councillor of the Municipality of Gibellina, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Gibellina), Chiara Donelli (professor of the University degli Studi di Parma), Simone Zacchini (curator and art historian), Piero Tomassoni (curator of contemporary art working between London, Abu Dhabi and Italy, international consultant for museum projects in the Middle East), Barbara de Magistris (senior retail manager, supporter of important projects and many artists, who has always combined the world of business and finance with that of art). In preparation at the historic spaces in Via Mazzini, Arezzo, are exhibitions by: Nevio Mengacci (2022), Sean Shanahan (2022), Claudio Parmiggiani (2022).

Sergio Lombardo's unpredictable and nonsensical new faces on display in Arezzo

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