Vicenza, at the Coppola Foundation the double solo exhibition of Matthias Weischer and Flavio De Marco

Double solo exhibition at the Coppola Foundation in Vicenza, which from May 6 to July 30, 2023 presents Stanze, an exhibition by Flavio De Marco (Lecce, 1975) and Matthias Weischer (Elte, Germany, 1973), which can be visited in the spaces of the Torrione di Porta Castello, accompanied by a critical text by Davide Ferri.

The project, which includes about thirty paintings, is first and foremost a chance to explore the work of two artists, considered by the Foundation to be emblematic in the panorama of international painting: Weischer, known in Italy for his participation in the 2005 Venice Biennale, is in fact, along with Neo Rauch and David Schnell, one of the leading representatives of the New Leipzig School, which represented, at the turn of the 1990s and 2000s and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a moment of profound renewal in international figuration; De Marco, on the other hand, has developed over more than two decades a relentless research and reflection on the screen as landscape in painting, and has held solo exhibitions in Italian and international museums and foundations such as the Estorick Collection in London, Collezione Maramotti, Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, Galleria Nazionale in Rome and Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara.

Stanze thus aims to be above all a dialogue and a comparison between the poetics of the two artists, which is articulated along the five floors of the Torrione around a central core: the spatiality of the painting, which translates into the representation of interiors - rooms, in fact - to which correspond interior landscapes.

Weischer’s works, in particular, focus on uninhabited, enigmatic spaces and environments, suspended between a before and an after, between the disappearance and the silent expectation of human presence and happening. The rooms painted by the artist are thus half-empty environments, temporarily abandoned, stripped of elements of reality, places where the sense of waiting is amplified through the introduction of other spaces within the rooms, paintings and mirrors (thus images within images) frequently hanging on the walls of the rooms. Weischer’s works, moreover, are scores in which space is defined through a long process of layering, which gives the painting a vibrant material presence, like a sensitive skin that is also, inevitably, a dimension of time.

In Flavio De Marco’s works, a note of virtuality permeates the representation of landscape and rooms: as in many of his past works, smartphone and PC screens are the window from which to investigate the contemporary age. Thus, in the latest series of works, the artist seems to give life to images that, starting from a push towards genre painting (still life and landscape), explore the possibility of a new form of spatiality: representation that is not coherent and not organic, but rather composite, fragmented, with continuous openings/closures and refractions that blow up the boundaries between real and virtual space, suspending the images (and rooms) in a sort of perpetual indefiniteness. Contrary to what accesses in Weischer’s works, moreover, in some rooms painted by De Marco the figure may appear: a fragile presence, an absorbed and impenetrable body, at the mercy of different dimensions of time and space.

The Torrione di Porta Castello thus gets closer to its original nature as a house, articulated in the rooms built by Flavio De Marco and Matthias Weischer giving the visitor the impression of moving through a stratified dwelling, in which it is possible to recognize the tension of a future already present, rooted in an intimate past: a continuous reference to the search for the domestication of space.

The exhibition is accompanied by public-facing activities that will be communicated on the Foundation’s social channels and through newsletters. Open: Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 2 to 6 p.m. Last admission half an hour before closing. Admission tower with exhibition € 5, admission tower without exhibition € 4, reduced admission for the over-65s € 4, free for the under-18s, all university students in possession of the VI-University card, and accredited journalists in possession of a valid press card. Ticket sales at the front desk end at 5 p.m., one hour before closing time. Visiting regulations: https://www.fondazionecoppola.org/regolamento-di-visita/

Vicenza, at the Coppola Foundation the double solo exhibition of Matthias Weischer and Flavio De Marco

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