Gianluca Marziani
Maurizio Pellegrin in Rome
 
in “Tema celeste - Arte Contemporanea”
December, 1999
 

The three urban poles on which Maurizio Pellegrin’s art and life rotate around are Venice, New York and Rome. The lagoon city as a place of birth and growth, the U.S. metropolis as an acquired center of artistic maturation, Rome as an undeniable passion: between the angles of a geographic triangle that gathers the past and the possible future of the past which attempts to renew itself – Rome and Venice – and the new one that grows – New York – Pellegrin has developed his intellectual path. With an artistic method that favors a walled composition formed from many heterogeneous elements, synergetically paths on surfaces by at least a graphic mark – the unforgettable numbers – and from simple materials – for example, black cloth that envelops some of his works – Pellegrin’s fragmented works are based on geometrically closed dimensions, in which the fragment find its “classic” dimension and founded on an unforgettable sense of “contemporary time” that updates the work. The artist, thus, gives substance to the relationship between the geography of his cities and the formal geography of an artistic language that moves itself on the multiple planes of interpretation. The exhibition at Valentina Moncada is entitled Your Glance, the one at Il Ponte L’ultima notte. Two particularly significant works: Your Glance, a rectangular composition with pages of Eighteenth century manuscripts on gauze, the photograph of an eye in the central band of the composition and an object hanging from a long string; L’ultima notte, an antique fragment of gilded wood with pieces of black cloth that support a chalkboard rich with phrases. As a physical and mental passage between the three cities, tradition and sense of the present are contained within Pellegrin’s artistic path.