GIOVANNI FRANGI

CARAN D'ACHE

February 13 - March 30, 2019

ABOUT KROMYA

KROMYA ART GALLERY viene fondata nel 2018 a Lugano da Tecla Riva, Giorgio Ferrarin e Adriano A. Sala come risultato di una passione e di competenze comuni di lunga data. Nel 2020 KROMYA ha ampliato la propria sede con un nuovo avamposto a Verona, in Italia

The “GIOVANNI FRANGI – CARAN D’ACHE” exhibition was held at the Kromya Art Gallery in Lugano from February 13th to March 30th, 2019. This was the first exhibition of the well-known Milanese artist in the Swiss city.

Giovanni Frangi, born in Milan in 1959, is recognized for his poetic style characterized by a procedure for series of works, or cycles. His artistic research is focused on nature, which is a source of inspiration for his works ranging from natural installations to cycles of works inspired by the coast near the Palmaria island, as seen from the sea.

The exhibition presented at the Kromya Art Gallery is the result of Frangi’s most recent artistic research, in which he compared some cycles on which he has insisted in the last two or three years. It is not a monothematic exhibition, as often happens in his habit, but it is an attempt to make different situations dialogue. Frangi’s poetics is characterized by a procedure for series of works, or cycles. For him, it is necessary to investigate his “motives” with obsessive variations, realizing that the strength of the work does not end in its singularity, but is declined in all possibilities and variations.

At the entrance of the gallery, there are three small sculptures made of plaster and acrylic resins, resting on wooden pedestals named La vita segreta delle piante (The Secret Life of Plants). With their organic movements, they recall forms of primordial life. All three come from Urpflanze, an exhibition held last summer at Villa Carlotta in Tremezzo on Lake Como. Then it is the turn of Arcipelago (Archipelago), a cycle of works inspired by the coast near the Palmaria island, viewed from the sea. These are visions that could be those of men from distant worlds who are about to land there. The next room is dedicated to Ansedonia, images of a fragment of a forest in the pine forest where even Mario Schifano, a tutelary deity of Frangi, loved to spend the summer. Finally, we find the Ninfee (Water Lilies), works to which the artist has dedicated a lot of attention in recent times. In their realization, he finds a great spontaneity, so much so that he has declared that he “can paint them even with blindfolded eyes”. Big and small, painted on a black or white background, but all inspired by images taken at the Botanical Garden of Padua.

GIOVANNI FRANGI
CARAN D'ACHE

February 13 - March 30, 2019

ABOUT KROMYA

KROMYA ART GALLERY viene fondata nel 2018 a Lugano da Tecla Riva, Giorgio Ferrarin e Adriano A. Sala come risultato di una passione e di competenze comuni di lunga data. Nel 2020 KROMYA ha ampliato la propria sede con un nuovo avamposto a Verona, in Italia