Dan Cameron
Maurizio Pellegrin
 
The Centre Gallery, Miami-Dade College, Wolfson Galleries
catalogue of the exhibition , Miami, 1993
 

Even for those viewers familiar with recent developments in Italian art, the work of Maurizio Pellegrin presents itself as an unexpected hybrid of contemporary ideas informed by an acute sensitivity to the past. With his precise wall arrangements of objects, on which numbers are stencilled as if part of a personal inventory system, the artist tends to strictly adhere to the boundaries and proportions of the traditional rectangular or oval picture, working within these parameters to loosely suggest a grid. The objects are more often fragmented than whole, and frequently wrapped, conveying a strangely muffled quality despite their air of sombre intent.
And although some of the objects invariably assume a kind of precedence over others, Pellegrin labours over the details of their interactions as if they were diagrams for some form or elaborate social ritual.
Of course, how else is one to characterize contemporary art, if not as an elaborate social ritual, which acts by developing ever more complex rules of order and signification in order to both convey and conceal its central meanings?
Pellegrin is Venetian, and feels himself connected to that seductive tradition in two ways: through painting first and foremost, but also through the idea of travel as the primary means of coming into contact with the full richness of humanity.
This tradition, symbolized by the journeys of Marco Polo, lives on in Pellegrin’s practice of gathering objects as he moves from place to place. Once accumulated, these fragments of other cultures are incorporated into Pellegrin’s work through the process of quantification (the enigmatic numbering), and through their recontextualization as part of a poetic system in which differences are subsumed within a greater cosmological whole. For the artist, this state is most frequently achieved by attaching new meanings and relationships to these artifacts, obscuring their previous identity at the same time as he tries to unlock a secret expressive potential.
The consideration of certain individual works on view may help to illustrate the great variety of meanings that appear in Pellegrin’s art. In "Circle of Seduction", for example, a padded canvas body shield used in fencing becomes the centre of on oval composition made up of dorens of small wooden fragments arranged in a kind of hale. Most of the pieces of wood have been partially wrapped in either black or canvas-colored cloth. For the artist, describing an extended state of attraction/repulsion between the centre and the periphery, or between the softness of the fencing shield and the hardness of the wooden fragment-suggests a systems which, like the body, becomes increasingly vulnerable as its centre is approached.
By contrast, the composition of Non ho che la Notte is based on the basic colors of red and fan, and incorporates objects with more specific connotations: covers from bound volumes of the Ukrainian Daily News (1934-41), a red beret, old cloth mail bag, and fragments of a game using standing pins. Here a sense of daily life is reflected by things - newspaper, mail, games - that connotes information and a gradual accumulation of memory over time. If there is a dichotomy embedded in the work, it is that of contemplation vs. action, play vs. War. Here, Pellegrin’s use of numerological systems, which are always quite precise, seems more so, at least insofar as the numbers on each object consistently add up to system of faith, functions as a sign of the spirit, of the presence of the mystical within the unfolding of everyday life.
Pellegrin’s assembled compositions often incorporate black-and-white photographs, with their points of reference deliberately left unclear. In the work Binario No. 10,
a process of doubling takes place with two pairs of objects that start off identical, but are altered on their way to the composition. In the accompanying photograph,
a fragment of a leg in denim is pressed up against another cloth surface, with the viewer unable to discern whether it is the same person or not. Far from unlocking the mystery of the work, the photograph’s meaning becomes as obscure as the rest – suggesting that the camera can also be used both to hide and reveal.
In Città (City), one of the most ambitious works on view, the artist has distributed two dozen wooden hat forms along a ‘background’ consisting of linen banners. Running across the top of the work is a series of old ledger covers bearing fashion and architectural images from the beginning of the century. While communicating a visual density and quantitative force that is consistent with its urban references,
the combination of red and black wrappings in this work also suggests a somewhat melancholy reflection on themes of rigor, passion, memory and death.
If there is a hidden order of signification in Pellegrin’s work, it would appear to revolve around the questions of mortality: the extreme limitations of human life in relation to the seemingly infinite unfolding of time against which the meaning of art is slowly accumulated. Our spiritual aspirations as living creatures are best reflected Spirito e Tensione della nostra Adolescenza, which incorporates a typical American teacher’s desk, faced by over 200 drawings on paper laid out on the floor. The metaphor of life as a trial-and-error process of learning is doubled by the positioning of the drawings below and in front of the desk, which may be thought of both as the receptacle of knowledge and the standard against which new information is evaluated. From the theme of ordering as a social construct, to that of art as a quest for knowledge, Pellegrin’s work builds the argument that creativity forms the core expression of life’s goal of self-knowledge. With it, the journey from birth to death includes at least the possibility of achieving meaning, even if the underlying cause is forever eluding our grasp.