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Gianni Piacentino

Curated by Germano Celant, the Fondazione Prada’s exhibition devoted to Gianni Piacentino comprises more than 90 works in anti-chronological order, from 2015 to 1965.

Curated by Germano Celant, the anthological exhibition devoted to Gianni Piacentino (Turin, 1945), hosted on the two levels of Fondazione Prada’s Podium, comprises more than 90 works, retracing the artist’s path in anti-chronological order, starting from his most recent works from 2015 and working its way backwards to those from 1965.

Piacentino’s research began in an artistic and cultural background characterized by an increasing detachment from the subjectivism which had animated Action Painting and Informalism, as well as by the development of a new visual language mixing the attention to pop and consumer imagery and the appreciation for both geometrical and primary forms. His work, however, did not embrace either of the dominant tendencies of those times – Pop art and Minimal art – but, according to the original reading of his work provided in this exhibition, generated a dialectic process between the two.

In order to research the terrain where these two currents converge, Piacentino turned to the world of velocity and transportation including cars, motorcycles and planes, all products of pop culture which, while not part of the realm of pure art, are expressions of industrial aesthetics. In this respect, the artist approaches the aerodynamic fantasies of many Californian artists: from Billy Al Bengston to Craig Kauffman, from John Mc Cracken to John Goode. As Germano Celant explains: “It is in this historical climate of oscillation between art and design, handicrafts and industry, the useful and the useless, the one-off piece and the mass-produced object, that we can place the contribution of Piacentino, whose otherness and uniqueness lie precisely in the dialectic between the two poles. Since 1966 his sculptures have been aiming for a result that transcends the functional object, even though the latter remains recognizable as a possible industrial product with decorative characteristics, as it is derived from a culture steeped in applied science, handicrafts and the precision of mechanics and sophisticated engineering processes”.