EDOARDO SERVADIO | 2021 : A TIME ODYSSEY
EDOARDO SERVADIO | 2021 : A TIME ODYSSEY
JUNE 16 - JULY 13, 2021CURATED BY MICHELE FERRARI
Antonacci Lapiccirella Fine Art is delighted to present the first solo exhibition in its gallery of Edoardo Servadio (Genoa, 1986), entitled “2021: A TIME ODYSSEY”. This exhibition, curated by Michele Ferrari, features a coherent and harmonious project, in which the spaces of the Via Margutta gallery become home to Servadio’s bronze sculptures. The selection of 28 works on display represents an unexpected and surprising combination, in which 14 works of ancient art dialogue with as many contemporary works, bringing to life a set of iconographic references and interesting assonances.
CRITICAL TEXT BY MICHELE FERRARI
The sculptural technique of Edoardo Servadio (Genoa, 1986) has taken shape a complete immersion in the cities that have always inspired his work, nourished by a ‘vivacitas’ of order and disorder and characterized by an indefinable harmony. In the intrepid artistic project entitled Decoro Urbano the aesthetics of Rome are openly challenged and their structures revisited through the use of the most intimate symbols of the city: the heraldic insignia of the twenty-two rioni and thirty-five quarters which go to make up the multifaceted capital of Italy.
The manhole covers, apogee of the metropolitan sewage system, are only one of the starting points chosen for the manifestation of a renewed aesthetic filled with emblems, figures, incarnations, representations and antonomasia, which steers the gaze from the future to the forgotten codes of the past. The sign of the hour beyond the curve of the era.
Influenced also by Gian Battista Piranesi’s views of Rome, the artist composes his sculptures in patinated and painted bronze in a dynamic linear play of rhythm and space, where the colour becomes a lively child-like abstraction, almost obsessively exploring the potential of a single compositional method dominated by straight lines and right angles, the structural genesis at the basis of Lapidario Moderno – an original font developed as an integral part of his entire graphic and communication system. From here a meticulous process of additions to and reductions of Piranesi’s figurations, together with the coat of arms of The Urbe, endows Servadio’s works with a seductive, empirical fancy whose roots lie in the history of the territory and of those who inhabit it. An odyssey through time, then, a dreamlike exploration in a continuous balancing act between symbol and meaning, where subtle intercultural contrasts are roused to produce a dynamic interaction between places and peoples, bringing back the symbols of the classical past to dialogue anew with the present. In Rome today the new means parody. Ceres in Primavalle, Apollo Soranus in Monte Sacro, Jupiter in Alessandrino, Pluto in Pietralata, Neptune in Collatino, Saturn in Appio Claudio and Mars in San Basilio are just some of the ancient deities lent to the most recent Roman quarters, in a succession of chimeric combinations.
Research that is also migratory, indissolubly linked to the theme of the journey, and composed of numerous chapters in continuous evolution, tracing a geometric path which stretches from the world to the stars… and other planets.
Antonacci Lapiccirella Fine Art is delighted to present the first solo exhibition in its gallery of Edoardo Servadio (Genoa, 1986), entitled “2021: A TIME ODYSSEY”. This exhibition, curated by Michele Ferrari, features a coherent and harmonious project, in which the spaces of the Via Margutta gallery become home to Servadio’s bronze sculptures. The selection of 28 works on display represents an unexpected and surprising combination, in which 14 works of ancient art dialogue with as many contemporary works, bringing to life a set of iconographic references and interesting assonances.
In the form of two-dimensional plates in patinated and painted bronze with a striking visual impact, Edoardo Servadio’s manhole covers are the result of a creative but also well-considered artistic practice which entirely revisits the heraldic insignia of each the 22 rioni and 35 quarters which make up Rome – coats of arms aesthetically reworked in the case of already existing symbology or created ex novo by the artist following investigations and studies which meld history, fantasy, legend and local geography: a sort of urban anthropology. The manhole covers are part of a larger project, entitled ‘Decoro Urbano’, which aims to bring the places and memories of the history of The Urbe back to the present day.
Angles and curves are the opposing geometrical references and conceptual inspiration for the exhibition, finding sublimation in the comparison of two very different yet corresponding works: the Profilo Continuo of Renato Bertelli and the Alfabeto Lapidario Moderno, the first – a Futurist work from 1933 – without any sharp angles, the second – a brand-new typographic font of Servadio – without curves, producing an aesthetic dissonance that remains unitary in its diversity.
The result: 28 works on show for 28 days in a fascinating evolution of time from the 2nd century AD to 2021 which enjoys being an odyssey through time.
