TURNING POINT: SIMONE PELLEGRINI
(April 2 - May 7, 2022)
Cavin-Morris Gallery is honored to present the first American exhibition of the drawings by Italian artist Simone Pellegrini.
These seemingly simple but deeply complex works are a dialog between secrecy and mystery. At first glance one may see them as arenas of secrecy, but there is a difference between secrecy and mystery that plays with and shifts our perceptions. Secrecy implies the possibility of empirical explanations if the facts could only be revealed. Secrets have sources and deliberately hidden answers. Secrets can be solipsistic. Mysteries remain poetic, sensual and eternally meandering. For any number of reasons mysteries answers remain sensual and forever implied, and rarely if ever show themselves.
Simone Pellegrini’s drawings hint of secrets, of post-modern accumulations and accretions of historical, mythical, talismanic, and cultural images, but they are in fact mysterious instead, as if the artist was cut free in time, improvising and sampling imagery like a visual DJ from a constantly in motion stream of consciousness. He is improvisatory in such a way that the visual narrative shifts and travels, shapeshifting constantly as it moves from his restless hand to our receptive eyes.
To make a carefully narrated vision to appear spontaneous and eternal yet immediate is not an easy accomplishment. Pellegrini is a psychic animist giving shape and presence on his papyrus-like papers to an endless parade of thought forms but also the animal, mineral, and plant forms, allowing them to coalesce by juxtapositions into an organic architecture of the universe without ever completely losing their old identities.
Singly, each drawing is complete, and grouped together they piece out a large vision made cohesive by the watchful editing and blending by the artist manipulating from the center. They are a free jazz solo using ancient and contemporary voices from his instrument.
When discussing secrets, one runs into a wall that can only be moved or passed through by ultimate revelations before the truth is outed. When one discusses mystery the song plays on continuous repeat, dispersing and regrouping like incense smoke. The nine large drawings on our walls will never look the same twice and we can enter more deeply into them by suspending disbelief and the need for linear answers. Instead, we can surrender to them and the subtle but vivid power of their timeless mysterious ritual. All nine drawings are rituals.
For further information please call us at 212-226-3768 or email us at info@cavinmorris.com.
