The exhibition, curated by Patrizia Mania and Nicoletta Billi, explores the artistic career of Luigi Billi (Florence 1958 – Milan 2016) eight years after his sudden and tragically premature death, revisiting the most significant stages in that career.
A deliberately episodic narrative relying on flashbacks captures the essence of an approach to art that was permanently suspended between personal and collective memory, ceaselessly overturning cultural stereotypes and consistently revealing an outstanding sensitivity for texture and composition.
The more than fifty exhibits on display range from his early “accartocciamenti” (“crumpled” artworks that were to become a recurrent feature of his career) which – albeit after considerable critical questioning – reappraise the gap with consumer images having artistic aspirations, to works in which painting and photography, gesture and texture overlap, and through which the artist variously explores the hidden structure of nature (Forest Skies), the aporias of images (Dear Mum, we’re all well. Dear Dad, we’re all dead, Heroes) or the impertinence of the word (I’ve forbidden my father to call me son), but works which, at the same time, are also capable of openly revealing themselves as political, displaying a tireless ethical tension alongside an equally inexhaustible search for expression.
The exhibition also serves as an opportunity to present the new website of the Archivio Luigi Billi, which will be back on line at www.archivioluigibilli.it from September, with the dual aim of disseminating and promoting Billi’s art and of contributing to the drafting of a general catalogue of his works.