Jonathan Turner
The Game of Numbers
 
in “Maurizio Pellegrin - Works 1990-1994”
edited by Jonathan Turner, L'Aquila, 1994
catalogue of the exhibitions:
“L’ultima notte”, Il Ponte Contemporanea – Roma;
“Your Glance”, Valentina Moncada – Roma;
“Forze della passione”, Piano Nobile – Perugina;
“Segnare il vuoto”, Eos Arte Contemporanea – Milano;
“Arizona Series”, Studio Tommaseo – Trieste;
“Wall Sculptures”, Museo Revoltella – Trieste
 

In Venice, many places have what could be called a typical, local Gothic facade. While there is no exact formula for the typical Venetian facade, there is a certain look. Visually, the front of the palace can be reduced to a large, flat rectangle and the focus is a row of ornate windows at the centre, on the first floor. A group of pointed windows are usually clustered together, sometimes flanked by a pair of identical windows placed at a small distance on either side. Of course, these windows are not in fact identical. The glass panes are not alike. The shutters are not the same, the awnings may be drawn at different levels, the decorative stone carving around each window frame will have been eroded in an individual way. Other windows in simpler styles can be seen on the upper floors, and there are usually several, larger rectangular openings at the ground floor. From the outside, the windows on the first floor don’t necessarily relate to the ones above or below, but evidently, they form part of a logical, architectural placement.
Sometimes protruding balconies have been added. The geometry and symmetry of the buildings is further broken by stone friezes, sculptures and family crests mounted on the facade, or by the linear forms of metal struts stapled through the brickwork during past projects of restoration. The eye travels from detail to detail, eventually noticing the subtle differences between similar architectural elements.
By comparing these elements, the eye sees the windows and other elements as series of separate objects assembled against a backdrop. Appreciation grows through careful observation, and the eye ends up focusing on those details which make each element unique.
 

“A Venetian is a man of the sea, always in flux, always in movement, changing like a reflection in water. It’s in our nature to look abroad. And ever since I was a boy, I’ve been attracted by Venetian figures – Tintoretto, Titian and the other old masters, as well as by the romantic adventurer Marco Polo, with his tales of silk and spices, bandits and spies”.
 

Maurizio Pellegrin’s work focuses on new methods of communication.
Each object in his installation has its own accent and dialect. On the wall, he mounts rigorously selected series of similar objects – leather belts, rubber stamps, balls, coils of rope – in combination with other items totally unrelated in terms of style, material and size. These works resemble the obsessive display of a butterfly collector, exhibiting his rarest species amongst the pictures, lamps and personal belongings hanging on the walls of his home.
Pellegrin chooses and arranges his series of objects in a way which transcends the idea of simple repetition. Visual surprise is created by the unexpected interplay of the various forms. The viewer eventually concentrates on the details of chance and other slight differences between numerous similar items.
Pellegrin’s handcrafted are precisely arranged to create their own sense of rhythm. Padded black circles and rectangles conjure up idea of the notes of a musical score. Other melodies are suggested by Pellegrin’s use of tarnished trumpets hanging in a row, a zither trapped by steel clamps or the cropped photograph of a man playing a viola. Pellegrin applies the language of alliteration and assonance to his collections of his similar forms, which he fixes to the wall in lines of dots and dashed like visual Morse code, or arranges in rectangular blocks like the page from a book of Braille. Other signs of language are present in the flowery script of an 18th century love letter, in pages of red, Chinese calligraphy, a shop sign and, in L’ultima notte,
the partially obscured poem written in chalk on the blackboard.
Pellegrin uses a number of methods to disrupt the simple reading of his poetic themes. A blindfold is a device used to mask the viewer, but Maurizio Pellegrin blindfolds his artworks instead. He wraps his found objects in black cloth, to alter their contours and “also to contain their energy”.
Pellegrin’s bandage-like wrappings hide and protect. “They are also bonds of friendship”. Using bandanas or thick, black paint, he shields the eyes of the figures in the incidental photographs he incorporates in his installations. It is as though Pellegrin has reversed the order of things, so that the art itself is looking at the viewer but the artist has interfered with the line of vision.
 

“I don’t know whether I find the objects or the objects find me, but I end up putting all the fragments together. It’s a system, like the planets or like our bodies. It’s all about unity, like many chapters put together to complete a novel”.
 

In the photographs he uses, Pellegrin captures a world of unsuspecting actors and anonymous film locations. It is a world of shifting perspectives. This staged, cinematographic atmosphere is never more evident than in About the Six, in which the girl in the photograph turns her back on the viewer. She is flanked by a pair of reels from a cinema projector and some strips of celluloid.
Pellegrin’s photographs often feature figures performing tasks which are inexplicable to the viewer. He crops the pictures, removing information which is essential for us to understand them. Alternatively he prints them in reverse, further masking the idea of the photograph as an image of journalistic truth.
“I’m attracted by photographs that provoke a mechanism of seduction”, he says.
“I find them, I take them myself or I buy them. It doesn’t matter how they end up in my hands, they are fragments which eventually complete a unity.”
Pellegrin lends affectionate, human qualities to his art. “I use objects with an aura, particularly those with a special human weight, showing the hand of man. I’m more interested in objects which demonstrate the physical presence of man than in the human body itself”. Hence his raw materials include gloves, hat blocks, umbrella handles, shoe-forms, books and the more aggressive symbols of knives, slingshots and a hangman’s noose. The neatly ordered catapults in Headlights seem to be ready and waiting to shatter the lights of the shiny Wolseley automobile in the photograph.
It is as though Pellegrin has embarked on a mission of damage control, supplying the target and the weapons, but not the ammunition. Each forked stick making up a catapult seems to have its own story to tell, as if it had been cut from the tree of knowledge.
Many of Pellegrin’s raw materials are body surrogates or man-made objects accentuating human contact. They recall the noisy arena of sport – the thud of a baseball striking the catcher’s mitt, the roar of a car-racing circuit.
Meanwhile, dull metal, black fabric, monochrome photographs, damaged wood and other “poor” materials lend a somber tone reminiscent of black-outs and war-time rationing. Pellegrin often includes ropes and well-worn artisans’ tools in his final compositions, so that an individual work may provide they own biography of its manufacture. Similarly, the artist does not try to hide the workings of the objects he affixes securely to the wall with nails and a hammer.
Pellegrin’s installations have particular gravity. They never hover. There is no attempt to disguise their weight. The nails and string are there for all to see.
The mystery is supplied by other mechanisms. For example what is contained in the small, tied bags in Nella tua ombra and Fortuny? In Pellegrin’s tight bundles of found manuscripts, are all the drawings and writings in the stack as important as the one on top?
As a Venetian, Pellegrin sees himself as a navigator who embarks on voyages to discover different materials and subjects, such as an image of a cactus in Arizona
or pages of formulas written in Chinese. Some of the objects he uses clearly proclaim their Venetian provenance – oars from a gondola, a swatch of Fortuny fabric, slumped glass from Murano, segments of gilded Byzantine carvings, and old postcard of Grand Canal. However, Pellegrin does not treat these items as a romantic souvenirs, but as protagonists with memories. His use of them surpasses their intrinsic beauty and value, giving them a new poetic force.
Finally, there are the numbers which Pellegrin paints or stencils on to the elements in his installations. For Pellegrin, each number has its own significance. “After all, our lives are ruled by numbers. Birthdays, telephone numbers, body weight. They’ re all quantitative. I also like the way in which the forms of the numbers themselves seem to vibrate”.
The viewer’s interpretation of the numbers changes the tone of the work.
Numbers as practical arithmetic versus the shady numerology of the occult.
In Del sentimento e dell’abbandono, the numerals painted on oval forms covered in cow-hide, even allude to the harsh aspects of branding. Pellegrin’s fascination with numerology is aligned to his obsession with symbolism. Conosco le tue parole,
with the number 21 painted on the wooden column, is Pellegrin’s ode to reaching maturity. The number 21 also refers to his birth date. “The tall, vertical pilaster, the small photo from infancy, the sense of solitude. This all signifies growing up”.

“In my work, everything has its material and spiritual contents. The objects I use have inert energy, a positive or negative feeling and the memory of man. So when I paint a number on an object, it is the hypothesis of the quantity of energy inside. It’s like an exam, and I am giving out marks”.

It seems only right that in the work of Maurizio Pellegrin, who says that he has “grow up in the shadow of Plato, Pythagoras and the study of the planets”,
nothing is casual. Everything is a metaphor, a key to interpretation, a form of some greater picture. But together, the fragments form a landscape of desire, and as a voyager, Pellegrin brings back images of a new continent of seductive beauty.

“The number one is starting point. It represents the absolute, it governs the universe. It’s the idea of the deity, the divine. In the Catholic world, it’s God. It’s the unity from which the whole chemical system is created. One also represents birth. Personally, I see the number one as the concept of solitude, which is the opposite to the idea of power.
It’s all for one, and one for all.
It’s the first time I was in love, the first time I lived alone, my first voyage. It’s a new adventure. Once, I even did a work called Storia dell’Uno– the history of one.

Obviously, the number two is all about duality. It’s the male/female. It’s Ying and Yang for the Chinese. It’s day and night, hot and cold, good and bad. It’s the double life, the difference between the dark side and the lighter aspects, like in the film Professione Reporter by Michelangelo Antonioni, a story of mistaken identity and exchange. But it also gives the sense of sharing, the idea of dividing with others.
Two represent the problems between the flesh and the spirit. In Venice I used to take the Number 2 Vaporetto all the time, but it doesn’t exist anymore. Now it’s the 52, the direct line.

Three is the number of the spirit. Geometrically, it represents the idea of triangle, therefore it’s the symbol of upward growth. In the Catholic faith, it’s the Trinity, but for the Indians , it represents the three levels of spirituality – Manas, Buddha and Atma. In any case, it’s not aligned to physicality, but instead to progress, to culture and to art.
For me, it is the number of self-imposed deadlines. I tell myself I’ll get something finished in three days, three month or three years. There is also the number of the cities I love – Venice, Rome, New York.
I loved my third motorbike. Of course, there are also the three protagonists in Easy Rider.

The number four is physical. It represents the material and the reason.
In fact, it’s the perfect square. There are the four cardinal points, the four seasons. There are the four elements – air, earth, fire and water. Four is something that is always very precise. It’s the arms and legs, the physical parts we use.
It’s the years of study at university. It’s the number of construction.
For me, four represents the rational, practical person.

Five is a number of action, of energy, of passion of movement. Of Mars.
It’s an arrogant number with a certain force. It’s the number of war and tension.
It wants to move, to breach an enclosure. It represents the five orders or styles of architecture – Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Tuscan and composite. There are also the five terrors and torments in the Inferno.
It reminds me of a journey I made to the Middle East several years ago, to Iran, Iraq and Jordan. The war was going on, and I ended being blocked there for almost a month.
The pentagon was the symbol of safety. Five is the number of jazz, but then, there is also Beethoven’s Fifth.

Six is a gentler number, the number of luck and love. It’s the melody, the music of positive vibrations. It’s soft versus passionate.
By chance, I found a number six, painted in blue, when I was excavating the wall in my studio in Rome. Repeated three times – 666 – it’s the number of man, the beast.

Seven is the perfect number, and according to Pythagoras it is magical. It’s the most complete, hence mystical number, made up three plus four, the spirit and the material together. It’s the best number. It has a esoteric, potential energy. It makes the most vibrations.
Every seven years, I think that a strange cycle exist, either positive or negative. Seven gives the idea of escape.
Don’t forget the Seven Year Itch.

Eight is the idea of infinity. It runs on itself. It gives the idea of permanence and continuity. 888 is the a number of Jesus Christ, so it’s all about beatitude.
Ancient Chinese writings refer to the eight musical sounds.
Sometimes eight gives me security, sometimes it irritates me. So while it hints at reincarnation, it also shows the methodical idea of a routine and monotony.
Fellini 8 e mezzo comes afterwards.

As the exact multiple of three, the number nine has all the specifics of three as well.
There are the nine orders of the angels and the nine Muses of ancient Greece.
The Masonic Lodge also has many references to the number nine.
Of the muses, I like Urania most, the muse for astrology. Nine reminds me of the angel in Wim Wenders’ film Wings of Desire. My favourite angels are the Seraphs and the Archangels. In case I had a choice, I’d been an Archangel.
However, in all honesty, the number nine doesn’t really interest me.”-