The Origin of Black Brain

After being displayed at Palazzo delle Esposizioni during the Quadriennale in Rome, the great painting dubbed ‘Black Brain 1’ at Massimo Minini gallery has been inserted in a reflecting steel cylinder, thus returning to its principle of pure memory, oblivion and focus on the idea. The mirroring shape only reflects the exterior and the comprehensible; it conceals the interior and its contents, which are not intelligible. We witness a reversal of perspective between the intimate sense of the work and its place of creation. The cylinder is the only element present in the first hall.
A shelf, built of wood from the frame of ‘Black Brain 1’, supports documentation presenting the work to the public, via the catalogue for the Quadriennale. The documentation is not complete and shows the unfinished painting.
In the second room Chiasera reconstructs the artist’s studio, the private place where he created the work and the preparatory drawings are on display. The studio opens out into the public part of the gallery, generating a change of sense, in which it is no longer possible to seek the work, with its particular connotations, but rather the sense of the work in its general components. The sketches use decorations to focus on the idea, but the code remains encrypted and all that is visible on the surface is the act of doing through the compulsion to repeat the decorative motif, which is developed in magical codes detectable in the Fibonacci series.
Two canvases, based on the preparatory drawings on display, can be viewed in Massimo Minini’s office and private space, separate from the public part of the gallery. The artist uses photographs to document the visitors’ interactions with these two works. After being exhibited, each painting will be enclosed in a steel container, providing protection, rest and oblivion from the sense of doing.
The purpose of this exhibition is to reveal the process of the work, starting from the end of ‘Black Brain 1’ and showing how it leads on to ‘Black Brain’ 2 and 3. The idea is that we can only enter into a relation of trust with the world. Its presence as a work will always be partial, as will our ability to read the different levels of existence in its relation to history, present, past and future.