Marianna Accerboni
Thoughts on the Concept of Infinity
 
in “Il Piccolo”
Trieste, October 11th, 1994
 

An interpretation of reality and human thought conceived as energy in its certain becoming is the essence of Venetian Maurizio Pellegrin’s expressive itinerary.
Today he is a citizen of the world, and by that I mean that fascinating and contradictory New York where all races and cultures of the globe flow into, much like his beloved Venice of a thousand years ago. New York is a place where the artist can create a dialogue and familiarize himself with these people and places, and express this understanding in the energy of his works, depicted through forms of contemporary language, which in Italy and Rome (the city where Pellegrin lived after having left Venice) can no longer stimulate him. In the unique compositional system of the artist – conceptual, dense, collected, free but at the same time sustained by an ordered structure of dialectic forces, there is always Inezia as its origins. It is a magical and unforgettable city, seemingly inert, but in its depths, for those who are capable of plunging in, the energy of thought circulates. It is weaved with the memory and presence of objects of the past, rich with pathos and force, like in the cloth Fortuny that appears in one of his works in the exhibition at the Studio Tommaseo until November 10th. Also in the photograph developed from a photogram shot in Arizona, close to the emotions felt for the magnificence of the tallest saguaros (enormous, hundred year old cacti), Maurizio Pellegrin verges upon some of Diego Valeri’s verses. This poet sung his fascination with the watery city in a thousand different ways, attempting to reveal its mysteries. His verses speaking of the fragility of Venice and of her everlasting continuance, like how nature is fragile but everlasting. Also the theme of numerology, omnipresent in the artist’s works, center on Eastern and Western philosophies and beliefs, passing straight through Venice, like an antique zipper between these two worlds. The artist often symbolically wraps the objects in order to protect them and retain their energy. It also happens in the small but interesting installation Incantamento cinese, a digression in which the image that characterizes the music is bandaged in order to preserve the enchantment. Near this work, an ancient bandage belonging to a Mandarin Chinese man from the Eighteenth century hangs, tied in order to keep the aura of cerebrality that spreads from it intact. The number chosen is eight, which recalls the idea of recurrence and infinity. They are combinations and themes that unusually create vibrations.
In Considerazioni sul concetto di infinito, through a composition of old objects (precisely because they are “energetic”), in a singular game between the separate parts which are moved with secret empathy by the artist, small fragments speak among themselves, creating a valence of infinity, but most of all, maturing a feeling of enchantment in the hearts and minds of the spectator.