Another duet in the celebrations for our forty-year milestone, which among other things, involve the publication of a five-hundred-page book about our work. Let’s just say we’re putting together a season in which we ourselves are curating the shows, unlike all the previous ones, where the artist has been the sole arbiter of decisions, albeit with input from the gallery or curator. And so the divertissement continues, this time with two artists from the same generation, two pioneers in their respective movements, two leading figures from day one in Italian Arte Povera and European Conceptualism, with seemingly divergent results.

Hans-Peter Feldmann (b. 1941 in Dusseldorf) developed his own wry brand of conceptualism based on seriality and repetition, on collections of everyday images—some quite commonplace; not far removed, in the end, from the approach of his countryman Peter Roehr, who made films and videos out of repeated images from advertising, daily life, the movies, and early television. In this, the two artists bear an affinity to Warhol.
Pier Paolo Calzolari (b. 1943 in Bologna) has roots that can be traced to Art Informel. One should keep in mind that Bologna was the hometown of Francesco Arcangeli, and when Marcatrè, Il Verri, and the major Arte Povera shows hit the scene, Calzolari found himself caught between the urge to flee from matter and the need to use it in new ways, with a different language, to arrive at outcomes diametrically opposed to those of his spiritual predecessors.

And so the show will include the ironic levity of Feldmann, who is showing fifteen paintings of seascapes – utterly run-of-the-mill, the kind of thing people pick up at summer auctions. Taken individually, they’re sheer kitsch, whereas brought together; they form an avant-garde work, if you’ll pardon the term.
We will also be presenting Feldmann’s Cento anni, a pivotal work with 101 portraits of people from zero to one hundred years old: a gallery of humanity that presents the forward march of time in condensed form. The passage of a century, in a breakneck ride lasting just a few seconds, has seldom felt so dramatically inexorable.

Calzolari, on the other hand, will be exhibiting four major works from the very early days: his bed with the rose and chalkboard; his large lead wall piece with the projector, torch, and tape player; his three-meter-long felt piece with gold thread, rose, and projector…  Four major editions of just fifteen copies, whose methods, materials, and contents sum up the undertakings and accomplishments of an “impoverished” Arte Povera approach wedded to a richness of concept.