Nature Morte Mumbai: LORENZO VITTURI: METAMORPHOSIS

Nature Morte is pleased to present a new body of work by the artist Lorenzo Vitturi.
This is our second show with the artist having presented his solo show in our New Delhi gallery in 2022.

The fog envelops the lagoon and the architecture in the distance. I walk along the canal with Lorenzo after leaving his studio in Murano. We pause for a moment to look around. In the cold mist, the edges – of land, buildings, thoughts – loosen up. A flock of birds interrupts the opaque sky, drawing an endless line, a space with no frontier. This all feels fleeting and, at the same time, eternal. “It is the substance of an image”, says Lorenzo, as if to frame this vision in time.

It is this felt presence of the image, its corporeal dimension, and the tension between what is material and impermanent that pervades Lorenzo’s oeuvre. Much of his photographic and sculptural work emerges from everyday interactions and dialogues with local communities and artisans. It also results from the careful study, manipulation, and combination of materials that he selects based on their provenance as well as their cultural and historical narratives. In particular, the selection presented for “Metamorphosis” at Nature Morte in Mumbai traces back to the artist’s biographical roots in Italy and Peru, while unveiling the result of collaborations with artisans in Murano, Italy, at the Jaipur Rug Foundation in India, and indigenous communities in Chinchero, Peru. To enter the landscapes embedded in these works is an act of balance and reframing. From gigantic soft sculptures floating from above, to small and delicate still-lifes containing fractal patterns and geometries, the works play on different scales. The oversized dimensions and softness of the pieces invite us to compare our bodies with other volumes, our material with that of the sculptures, while pointing to other, beyond-human forms.

Murano-fused glass, Peruvian yarns, fishing nets, Indian hand-made rugs, eucalyptus wood, cocaine leaves: the materials become the silent protagonists that tell multi-layered stories about lived experience. These experiences are not only those of Lorenzo and the artisans involved in making the work, but also of those who look at the forms and see parts of themselves in them. To accompany the viewer, the nature of the materials is discernible from the captions – list-like, almost inventorial – as if to create new combinations aimed at subverting canonical classifications. Lorenzo also powerfully re-employs the tradition and knowledge of glass and textile – adaptable mediums often labelled in ‘Western art’ as craft – to imagine new visual languages and encounters between cultures. In a way, these ‘handmade visions’ recall what scholar Gloria E. Anzaldúa defines as a borderland: an emotionally-charged space where two or more cultures meet, where different social classes encounter one other, where people of different heritages inhabit the same locales. In these suspended sculptures, shapes and materials encapsulate gestures, valleys, rivers, and entire regions, creating new geographical configurations and emotional maps. By embracing and abstracting the language of cartographies, Lorenzo questions borders but, above all, attempts to transcend them, to move beyond what separates ‘us’ from ‘them’. Instead, he questions how the fortuitous exchanges that emerge from encounters (of people and materials alike) might be sites for transformation and new routes. Where will they lead us?

Lorenzo Vitturi (b. 1980, Venice, Italy) works in photography, sculpture, and installation. Following his experience as a cinema set painter, Vitturi builds temporary sets and ephemeral sculptures, in-studio and on location, using both organic and fabricated materials. Starting from specific geographical locations and encounters with local communities, his work explores informal economies and the merging of different cultures, focusing on the movement of objects and people in a globalised world. His recent solo exhibitions include Money Must Be Made at Fondazione MAST, Bologna, Italy; Nulla è Puro at Centre Photographique Rouen Normandie, Italy; Materia Impura at FOAM Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Dalston Anatomy at The Photographers’ Gallery, London, at Contact Gallery, Toronto, and at CNA, Luxembourg. Vitturi also participated to group exhibitions at MAXXI in Rome, at Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, at Palazzo Reale and La Triennale in Milan, at BOZAR in Brussels, at K11 Art Museum in Shanghai, and at Barbican Centre in London. Vitturi’s latest book Money Must Be Made was published by SPBH Editions in September 2017. He currently lives between Venice, Italy and London, UK.
The project has been realised in collaboration with Jaipur Rugs Foundation.

Text by Giulia Civardi

This exhibition will take place in Nature Morte’s Mumbai gallery space at 3rd Floor, Dhanraj Mahal, Apollo Bunder, Mumbai.
The hours are Monday through Saturday from 11am to 7pm and the gallery is closed on Sundays.
For more information on the artist or the works in the exhibition
please visit our website at www.naturemorte.com or contact us at info@naturemorte.com.

PREVIEW: March 23, 6–8pm
March 23–April 27 2024
 

Spread the love