Where and when
The artist in conversation with Marco Tonelli
In collaboration with the exhibition Materia Prima
Loris Cecchini is an artist with an inexhaustible thirst for research and experimentation, who pays particular attention to innovative materials, in particular plastic and metal, and to the processes of growth, accumulation and crystallization associated with those materials. His research, however, is not limited to the formalization of an inorganic, chemical or molecular process, but turns towards an aesthetic actualization, understood as a metaphor of social, architectural, housing, structural and organic situations. His ability to investigate the processes of aggregation of matter has led him to understand the formal potential of any type of material, especially if technologically advanced or industrial use. His work can therefore be defined as a new way of thinking about contemporary sculpture, understood as a formal manipulation of artifices and non-aesthetic structures.
The meeting on the work and the language of Loris Cecchini, led by art critic Marco Tonelli, takes the cue from the very meaning of his poetics to get to the latest projects, including the creation of a site-specific ceramic work (practically unpublished matter for Cecchini) for the Materia Prima exhibition. The work, which will be permanently installed in the city of Montelupo Fiorentino, has the ambition to develop an ancient technique, but still technologically renewable, such as terracotta.
Loris Cecchini
Born in Milan in 1969, lives and works in Berlin. He has exhibited his work internationally, with solo exhibitions in prestigious museums including the Palais de Tokyo, the Musée d’Art Moderne in Saint-Etienne Métropole, the MoMA PS1 in New York, the Shanghai Duolun MoMA in Shanghai, the Casal Solleric Museum in Palma de Mallorca, the Centro Gallego de Arte Contemporanea in Santiago de Compostela, the Kunstverein in Heidelberg, the Teseco Foundation in Pisa, the Quarter in Florence, the Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci in Prato, the Arnaldo Pomodoro Foundation in Milan. He has participated in numerous international exhibitions, including the 56th, 51st and 49th Venice Biennale, the sixth and ninth Shanghai Biennale, the 15th and 13th Rome Quadriennale, the Taiwan Biennale in Taipei, the Valencia Biennale in Spain, the 12th Biennale Internazionale di Scultura di Carrara, the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Palazzo Fortuny in Venice, Macro Future in Rome. He has created many site-specific installations, including, in particular, the creations for Villa Celle in Pistoia (2012), for the courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, for the Boghossian Foundation in Brussels (2013) and the Cleveland Clinic’s Arts & Medicine Institute in the United States. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions all over the world, including the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, the PAC in Milan, Palazzo Fortuny in Venice, Macro Future in Rome, MART in Rovereto, Haywart Gallery in London, The Garage For Contemporary Culture Moscow, Exhibition Hall in Rome, the Musée d’Art Contemporain in Lyon, the MOCA in Shanghai, the Deutsche Bank Kunsthalle in Berlin and more.
Marco Tonelli
Art critic, has edited catalogs and exhibitions of modern and contemporary art, dedicated, among others, to Fabrizio Plessi, Bill Viola, Candida Höfer, Mimmo Paladino, Bertozzi & Casoni, Maurizio Mochetti. He was Councillor for Culture of the City of Mantua and Commissioner of Invitations of the XIV Quadriennale of Rome. He currently teaches History of Contemporary Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Frosinone and is Artistic Director of the Materia Prima exhibition at the Fondazione Museo di Montelupo Fiorentino. He has published at De Luca Editori d’Arte Pino Pascali. Catalogo generale delle sculture 1964-1968 (2011); The Art Horror Picture Show. From Transavanguardia to Transfunctionality (2011) and Francis Bacon. Literary atmospheres (2014). He is also the author of the essay The Impossible Statue. Sculpture and figure in modernity, Marinotti Edizioni (2008) and the monograph Pino Pascali: il libero gioco della scultura, Johan & Levi Editore (2010). His articles have been published in the magazines Ágalma, Mozart, Art and Dossier, Terzo Occhio, FMR, Look Lateral.