Debra Hopkins
The Water Dream and Other Works

Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art
Scottsdale, Arizona, 2002
 

Memory’s images, once they are fixed in words, are erased, Polo said. Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if it speaks of it. Or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little.
Marco Polo to Kublai Kahn – Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1972

An obsessive collector, Italian artist Maurizio Pellegrin arranges found objects gathered during his travels around the world, akin to Venetian traders of the past.
He meticulously composed books, 18th Century gilded objects, dress patterns, photographs, and other items according to an intricate, personal system of organization. Pellegrin is interested in the way objects transmit energy and how the memory of their use remains.
His wall arrangements and installations are characterized by a sombre beauty.
Found and fabricated objects are wrapped in black wool, red velvet or padded canvas and then organized based on their symbolic associations. These wrapped shapes, often described as bandaged or blind folded, read like a musical score, Morse code or a page of Braille.
Along with personal and historical references, Pellegrin’s work is steeped in symbolism. He ascribes meaning to his work based on the science of numerology – the study of numbers and their influence on human life. Mystical qualities have been ascribed to numbers since antiquity. Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher and mathematician, believed that all things are numbers and that numbers influence the essence of human life; Plato regarded numbers as the essence of harmony. As a Venetian, Pellegrin is occupied with the culture and history of Venice in two important ways: through the vibrant art of Renaissance masters such as Giorgione, Tiziano, Bellini, Carpaccio and Tintoretto as well as the accounts of the Venetian trader Marco Polo “with his tales of silk and spices, bandits and spies.”
In The Water Dream, Pellegrin pays tribute to the mythic allure of his birthplace. Once a prominent centre of trade and a leading sea power in medieval Europe, Venice was the main link between Europe and Asia.
Partly autobiographic, The Water Dream also evokes the city’s glorious past - a city floating on water, the churches and palaces filled with treasures, a city illuminated by color and light. Red is the predominant of this work, a symbol of passion, fire, energy, a metaphor for the ancient bond between Venice and the East.
Wooden objects, a felze – the gondola enclosure, a piece of coral and a black a white photograph conjure a Venice of long ago. “The Water Dream is the perpetual dream of sleepless waters”, says Pellegrin, “the dream of the spirit, of the memory, of the reason, the revolution and the mystery.”