Fondazione Prada, Milan, is to host an anthological exhibition devoted to Gianni Piacentino (Turin, 1945), curated by Germano Celant.
The exhibit, hosted on the two levels of the Podium, comprises more than 100 artworks and retraces the career of the artist, starting from his most recent works from 2015 to those dating back to 1965.
Piacentino’s research began in an artistic and cultural background characterised by an increasing detachment from the subjective dimension which had animated Action Painting and Informalism, as well as by the development of a new visual language mixing the attention to pop and consumeristic imagery and the appreciation for both geometrical and primary forms. Piacentino 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, operated somewhere between the two. In order to research the ground where these two currents converge, he turned to the world of velocity and transportation including cars, motorcycles and planes, all products of pop culture which, despite not belonging to the realm of pure art, are expressions of industrial aesthetics.
From 7 November 2015 – 10 January 2016.