Di Giorgio Di Marzo
Two important exhibitions in London have enlightened two among the most interesting Italian artists in the contemporary scene: Massimo Pulini and Alessandro Kokocinski.
The works by Pulini were at the centre on the programme Massimo Pulini, Diacromie at the Italian Cultural Institute from 19th to 29th of November 2006 – having as curators Sir Dennis Mahon, the greatest scholar of the Italy’s 1600s, and Dr Rossana Pittelli, Art Expert of the Institute. 15 among the latest works by Massimo were exhibited together with 5 paintings by Masters of the 1600s: Maddalena by Ficherelli, a Self Portrait attributed to Bernini, Saint Andrew by Guercino, Galatea by Cantofoli, Elena by Sacchi.
Two contemporaneous exhibitions – Inferno in Heaven at the Italian Cultural Institute from 7th December curated by Dr Rossana Pittelli, and Paradise in Hell at the art gallery Spectrum London from 8th December curated by Laura Petrillo – instead, honoured Kokocinski. The exhibition boasted itself of the participation, amongst the others, of the Italian Ambassador in London Giancarlo Aragona, of the Argentinean Ambassador in London Federico Mirre’ and of Pino Purificato, son of the great Italian painter Domenico). The exhibitions show a series of paintings on canvas and paper, and decorative panels.
Not only artist but also great scholar of 1600s, Pulini make the past live again in his works, reinventing it, making it object of reflection and experimentation of bright colours and shining varnish. An almost systematic and scientific study, in search for the reason itself hidden in the depth of image and colour. His visionary paintings deeply investigate, denuding of superfluous and transfiguring the canons of portrayal, in a sort of fight to the space-and-time boundaries that saw the large audience at the Institute as magically attract by the original colour mixture of Pulini’s works.
In Kokocinski’s paintings magic, dream and theatre melt tinging with supernatural, with thick brush-strokes of colour and flashes of light. The themes narrated by Kokocinski are the elements that determine the dialectic of life: anguish and passion, weariness and beauty, malice and love.
The paintings are impregnated with the multicultural background of the artist, honourable and onerous heritage, with a journey that from the roots run through Europe and Latin America and that domineeringly reigns on the visionary force of his work, on the immediate realism drawn by an intensely lived life and recounted by means of canvas and colours that has attracted an international audience, international indeed as Kokocinski’s art.
Two artists very different in the visual impact, two different languages but expressing the same message: the search for something more, the constant of not being content with the expressive canons, a life dedicated to art and, moreover, to life itself.
We have had the pleasure to have a few words with Pino Purificato at the Spectrum Gallery. Pino defines himself an Art’s Merchant in the Renaissance meaning, which has to be intended as the one who constantly searches for new artists and different modalities to promote them and their development. For the President of the “Fondazione Domenico Purificato” the Italian art market is blocked, especially because, too often, merit is not the only criterion: there is a lot of apportionment, also by art fairs, critics and papers. Another problem is the lack of a proper policy helping the youths to be also known abroad, thus leading to the distorted image of Italy as the country of the great artists of the past but not of the present. Therefore, exhibitions like that of Kokocinski surely help to show how Italy is a land still giving much to art.
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