Giuliana Carbi
Maurizio Pellegrin
 
in “Relativism. Biennal of the Quadrilateral 1"
Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art
catalogue of the exhibition
Rijeka (Croatia), 2005
 

Maurizio Pellegrin revises the principle of composition as order and weaving: momentary order governed by actual energy (and emotions) and predestined weaving that stands behind elements such as potential energy of the origin.
He accomplished this, on wide surfaces or in environmental installations that are undoubtedly huge, not only in terms of dimensions but also as a test that he puts himself through. One may take as an example, the feat that had never been attempted before to create eight simultaneous museum exhibits or the fact he maintains a daily relationship with two antithetical cities (as well as cultures) such as Venice and
New York.
This is to exemplify that this artist does not shrink from the loyal attempt to artistically represent demanding existential matters such as the contemporaneous presence of the varying and the permanent, of multiple specificity and abstraction, of presence and history.
His works might be described as contextual original areas in which a dialogue between two groups of entities is carried out. The first ones are groups, or rather categories, of functional objects that have been preserved and have reached us from the past, the second ones are cloths, bandages, hanks. Both categories are set up according to a reassuring harmonious and aesthetical order. Security is also inspired through their repetition. The functional objects preferably hold a relation of equality: these are for example sets of paint brushes, molds for shoes or sets of clubs.
The deuteragonists express a sense of protection and care, they collect, so to speak, and preserve, the essence of the objects by joining together their contemporaneous presence. These objects are bandages and cloths that now have finally been dyed, for having understood that there is responsible joy in the task that they have been assigned, to testify the story of existence that these objects convey.
The protagonists on the other hand, are narrators chosen among the utensils because they are the ones that through their extreme dedication, to the point of their own functional exhaustion, have assisted energy in action. All the elements of the work of art speak of the activity as a release of energy and they rest recognizing themselves in a common world. Likewise, this leads us to think that, man’s activity is the sum of his history and a mirror of his interior life.