Lynda Forsha
Maurizio Pellegrin at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
 
catalogue of the exhibition
La Jolla, San Diego, 1991
 

The San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art will present the U.S. museum premiere of recent works by Italian artist, Maurizio Pellegrin. […]
Pellegrin’s work, which was included in the Aperto exhibition at the prestigious Venice Biennale in 1988, communicates through a language of numbers.
Pellegrin states that, “numbers possess magical qualities. They vibrate and transmit messages. I believe that all the most important laws of nature are quantitative expressions.” His work unites fragments of dissimilar objects such as inner tubes, sporting equipment, tools, and photographs combined with objects made from stuffed canvas, many of which are unified with a striping pattern, stenciled with numbers, and arranged into compositions on the gallery walls.
Pellegrin’s coded objects are charged with a sense of mystery stemming from the associative use of numbers and the allusions to memory and preservation of the past that the objects arouse within the viewer.
One of the underlying concepts that has influenced Pellegrin’s work can be found in his statement, “The Universe is the combination of thousands of elements and yet the expression of a single spirit.”
“My recent works reflect this. They contain numbers, elements, and different combinations, which are related or opposed to one another. The work as a whole contains the depth of magic, the awareness of man’s cosmic dimension, and the multiplicity of the various visual languages.”
This exhibition will be comprised of six works, each composed from as few as twenty-two to as many as one hundred eighty-nine separate elements, arranged in configurations directly on the gallery walls. One of the works, Distant Desires, beyond the Garden, 1988, was acquired for the permanent collection of the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art with funds from the Lannan Foundation.
Distant Desires, beyond the Garden, 1988, is comprised of 35 elements – ranging from a canvas golf bag to a cropped photograph of a beautiful woman’s face to a glove – all bearing stenciled numbers and a striped pattern. Pellegrin states of his use and choice of the elements in his work, “The use of the objects in the works means a recovery of their former uses and associations with friendship, love, disappointments, and dramas. They are charged with the numerical vibrations and their new role of communication is defined.”
Strong influences that have informed Pellegrin’s work include photography and cinema, poetry and literature, architecture, music, and his birthplace -- the city of Venice. He elucidates the effect of Venice in his work, when he states, “I have always been accompanied by a deep sense of light. Every thing, person, or building in my city is flooded with light, or rather made of light itself.
With its eternal refraction of light, and the never-ending communication between the sky and the mirror-like lagoon, Venice is still like an incurable illness for me.”
In 1985 Pellegrin began his Roman period which he characterizes as being very important to his spiritual growth. This period also solidifies his use of photography and underscored the influence of cinema in his work.
Pellegrin, a native of Venice who now spends the majority of his time in Rome, studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice, and at the University of Ca’ Foscari in Venice.