In
the exhibition DI LUCE D’ORO, the GALLERY ISABELLE LESMEISTER presents
sculptural works by Italian marble artist Michelangelo Galliani
(1975). Even his name connects him the great epoch of Italian art: the Renaissance. Like
his famous namesake Michelanglo Buonarroti, Galliani uses only Carrara
marble as a medium for his artistic work, which is a particularly
historical material. Already
in Roman antiquity, marble was mined in the quarries of Carrara, which
became the bearer of some of the most famous works of art and buildings
in Italian art history. These
include the Laocoon group from the Vatican Museums, Michelangelo’s
David, Bernini’s robbery of Prosepina, parts of the cathedral to
Florence or the Campanile of Pisa. In
the case of Michelangelo Galliani, his attachment to this material may
be based on his artistic training, which he intensified after
graduating from the Art Schools of Parma and Florence in 2007 with a
diploma in sculpture at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara. Today,
he himself teaches sculpture at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Urbino.
The exhibits of DI LUCE D’ORO give an insight into
Galliani’s technically craft, which is always characterized by
recourse and reminiscences from the various genres of art history. In his latest series “Puzzles” we find a fusion of the categories sculpture and painting. Finely machined marble slabs take the form of puzzle pieces and find their matching counterparts in a rectangular layout. On
the plates, outline drawings are engraved, revealing figurative
representations whose counterparts can be found in the masterpieces of
Italian painting. Thus, the “Puzzle 00” shows – by looking closely at the profiles
of the two main protagonists of Piero della Francesca’s famous diptych
by Federico da Montefeltro and his wife Battista Sforza from 1472/73. The actual function of marble within art practice as a medium of sculptures is lifted by Galliani. He becomes the bearer of a drawing, in the same pure white as a canvas. This
hybridization and mutation of the material and the genres, combined
with a recourse to classical tendencies, is characteristic for Michelango
Galliani’s oeuvre.
