Enzo Cucchi proposes a single work on display: a radical gesture in his rarefaction of a single object, of modest dimensions in relation to the architecture of space designed by Zaha Hadid, exhibited on a base that itself becomes an integral part of the work. A putto, to whose big toe a scorpion appears to cling, hands to eyes in the gesture of the telescope for focusing the vision, reinterprets in an extremely contemporary image the classic iconography of the naked child, with references that recur in the history of art and that go from the Roman statuary to the great Baroque frescoes.
With this work/gesture, the fiercely modern Enzo Cucchi finally returns to talk about Rome, his adopted city, in whose cradle he has always nourished himself and in which he captures the sense of personal and civil resistance to the unstoppable progress of a world based on speed and emergency and of a culture of technology and science that increasingly drains the spaces of desire and freedom of thought every day.
Gian Ferrari Hall
«Painting recognises no customs. Children do not know gender. Art hates painters».
One of the most influential figures on the contemporary art scene presents a new project designed specifically for the spaces of the Gian Ferrari Hall at MAXXI. An extraordinary inventor of powerful and enigmatic images, Cucchi incorporates an aesthetic that ranges between time and history, thus synthesising individual myths and collective imagination.
Enzo Cucchi proposes a single work on display: a radical gesture in his rarefaction of a single object, of modest dimensions in relation to the architecture of space designed by Zaha Hadid, exhibited on a base that itself becomes an integral part of the work. A putto, to whose big toe a scorpion appears to cling, hands to eyes in the gesture of the telescope for focusing the vision, reinterprets in an extremely contemporary image the classic iconography of the naked child, with references that recur in the history of art and that go from the Roman statuary to the great Baroque frescoes.
With this work/gesture, the fiercely modern Enzo Cucchi finally returns to talk about Rome, his adopted city, in whose cradle he has always nourished himself and in which he captures the sense of personal and civil resistance to the unstoppable progress of a world based on speed and emergency and of a culture of technology and science that increasingly drains the spaces of desire and freedom of thought every day.
Photo © Mark Peckmezian, 2017