From Nature to Spirit

La mostra è il risultato di uno scambio di idee e di esperienze, sia a parole che e in termini visivi, sul rapporto tra lo spirito e la natura.

Comunicato stampa

Thomas Brambilla Gallery is pleased to present “From Nature to Spirit”, a group exhibition featuring works by the followings artists: Joe Bradley, Matteo Callegari, Matilde Cerruti Quara, John Giorno, Tamara Gonzales, Chris Martin, Ugo Rondinone, Bruce M Sherman, Domenico Zindato.
The show opens on Saturday 24 September, 2022 at 6pm.

This exhibition is the result of exchanging ideas and sharing experiences (both in words and in visual terms) on the relationship between spirit and nature. The artists offer a variety of personal contributions, reflecting the infinite abundance of reflections this topic offers; we can look at each piece as the crystallization of a stream of physical, emotional and mental energy that is intimately related to the journey from Nature to Spirit. The resulting visual dialogue in which singular pieces converse with one another is building a shared space where forms converge to create new relationships and possibilities.
We live in a society that is predominantly oriented by materialism, rationalism and its technological advancements; with an exaggerated emphasis on consumption. Nature is considered a mere subordinate to humankind, both as a source of raw materials and as a container for our waste. Fortunately, there is also an alternative view, which originates simultaneously from surviving native cultures and the historical ancestral past of “advanced” societies, where humans are regarded as one of the many intimately connected parts of a whole. This perspective considers nature as an infinitely complex network of interdependent relationships, composed by an incredible variety of organisms that display intelligent behavior.
Nature as a whole nourishes, heals and provides a sustainable environment to humans, and in certain circumstances it can provide even more: Since the first cave paintings with therianthropic figures humans have recorded how under the right circumstances Nature can offer a path to access the non-physical dimensions of life, where the confines of ordinary sensory perception are transcended. Even today we experience that once we rediscover a profound sense of relatedness, nature becomes a refuge where our individuality can become part of a whole.
In current times it is important to consider how these experiences generate meaning, how we are all of Nature: through developing this personal connection we can access a very fundamental part of ourselves and embody a sense of relatedness to each other and our world.
This exhibition reflects on how this relationship between spirit and nature influences disparate artistic practices; personal experiences and perspectives become embodied in these objects according to each of the artists’ sensibilities, sparking a vibrant dialogue that hopefully is very much needed today.

From Nature to Spirit – group show
24/09/2022 – 01/11/2022
Opening: sabato 24 settembre 2022.
Orari apertura: lunedì-venerdì ore 14-19.

La galleria Thomas Brambilla è lieta di presentare la mostra collettiva intitolata, “From Nature to Spirit”, con opere dei seguenti artisti: Joe Bradley, Matteo Callegari, Matilde Cerruti Quara, John Giorno, Tamara Gonzales, Chris Martin, Ugo Rondinone, Bruce M Sherman, Domenico Zindato.
La mostra inaugurerà sabato 24 settembre 2022 alle ore 18.
La mostra è il risultato di uno scambio di idee e di esperienze, sia a parole che e in termini visivi, sul rapporto tra lo spirito e la natura. Gli artisti coinvolti hanno apportato una varietà di contributi personali, rispecchiando l’infinita ricchezza delle riflessioni che questo argomento ci offre. Queste opere rappresentano la cristallizzazione di un flusso di energia fisica, emotiva e mentale che è strettamente legato al viaggio dalla Natura allo Spirito. Il dialogo visivo, nel quale ciascuna opera dialoga l’una con l’altra, è atto a creare uno spazio condiviso dove le forme convergono per creare nuovi rapporti e possibilità.
Viviamo in una società che è prevalentemente guidata dal materialismo, dal razionalismo e dai suoi progressi tecnologici, con un’enfasi esagerata sul consumismo. La natura è considerata un mero subordinato del genere umano, sia come fonte di materie prime che come contenitore per i nostri rifiuti. Fortunatamente esiste anche una visione alternativa, che prende origine simultaneamente dalla sopravvivenza delle culture native e dal passato storico ancestrale delle società “avanzate” dove gli esseri umani sono considerati come una delle tante parti intimamente connesse di un tutto. Questa prospettiva considera la natura come una rete infinitamente complessa di relazioni interconnesse, composta da un incredibile varietà di organismi dal comportamento intelligente.
La natura, nel suo insieme, nutre, cura e fornisce un ambiente sostenibile agli uomini, e in certe circostanze può fornire ancora di più: fin dalle prime pitture rupestri con figure umane teriomorfe, la natura ha offerto una strada di accesso alla dimensione “non-fisica” della vita, dove i confini della percezione sensoriale ordinaria sono trascesi. Persino oggi, non appena riscopriamo un senso profondo di relazione con la natura, questa diventa un rifugio dove la nostra individualità può diventare parte di un tutto.
Al giorno d’oggi è importante comprendere che queste esperienze possono portarci a riscoprire che siamo parte della Natura stessa: raggiungendo questa consapevolezza, accediamo così ad aspetto fondamentale di noi stessi e possiamo ampliare ulteriormente una relazione con il resto del mondo.
Le opere in mostra innescano un dialogo vibrante tra loro e ci permettono di riflettere su come questo rapporto tra spirito e natura influisca nelle varie pratiche artistiche.

JOE BRADLEY
In his paintings, drawings, sculptures, and mixed-media works, Joe Bradley (b. 1975, Maine) has produced a visual language that oscillates freely between personal and art historical references. Constantly reinventing himself, he cycles through some of the most iconic modes of abstraction, investigating Minimalist questions of color and form, tapping into the spontaneous gesture of Abstract Expressionism, and creating cryptic signs and symbols in ingenious, lively drawings. In his drawing practice Bradley uses such unorthodox materials as cardboard scraps, loose paper, and even sticky notes. While artistic precedents appear to be among his works’ influences and inspirations, they never settle into certainty. In many ways Bradley holds a mirror up to the art world itself, finding humor in the ever-shifting trends and traditions of recent art history. One aspect of his practice that remains constant is his emphasis on process: the intuitive motions of the artist’s hand, as well as the effects of material, memory, and environment. Bradley has participated in many solo exhibitions, such as: Sub Ek, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich (2020); Drawings, Gagosian, Geneva (2018); Day World, Gagosian, London (2018); Joe Bradley, Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham (2017); Joe Bradley, Peder Lund, Oslo (2017); Lotus Beaters, Gavin Brown's enterprise, New York (2013). Group exhibitions include: Omelette Papier, Capitain Petzel, Berlin (2022); Joe Bradley and Tobias Pils, Capitain Petzel, Berlin (2021); The Passion, Hall Art Foundation, Schloss Derneburg Museum (2021); Time Slip, Petzel, New York (2021); Drawing 2020, Gladstone Gallery, New York (2020); Group Show, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich (2020); American Pastoral, Gagosian, London (2020). Bradley's work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; de la Cruz Collection, Miami; Hall Art Foundation, Reading.

MATTEO CALLEGARI
Matteo Callegari (b. 1979 Latisana, Italy). Lives and works in New York, where he moved after receiving a Bachelor of Economics from Universita’ Ca’ Foscari, Venezia in 2003. Subsequently In New York he has received a Master in Fine Arts from Hunter College in 2011. He had solo exhibitions in Dallas, London New York and Milan. He also participated in group exhibitions in London, Paris, Oslo, San Juan, São Paulo, Tel Aviv, Zurich. His work has been published on Artforum, Flash Art, Kaleidoscope. Flash Art Publishing printed his first monograph in 2016. He has organized several exhibitions with the goal of creating a dialogue around central issues of his practice, working closely with artists of different generations. He started the nonprofit Light For the Amazon with the goal to conduct beneficial activities for the community of Santa Maria de Ojeal in Perú.

MATILDE CERRUTI QUARA
Matilde lives and works in London. She is a multimedia artist, performer, writer and poet of Italian and South Slavic descent whose practice expands across experimental theatre, text-based artworks and immersive, set-like installations. Rooted in storytelling, her work investigates language, archetypes and systems of belief, natural forces, spirituality and rituals, sexuality and power dynamics. Her live work embraces collaborations with choreographers, music composers and other performers. Matilde has also worked in journalism and creative direction (L’UOMO VOGUE, i-D Magazine), as well as having a curatorial practice and a background in production.

JOHN GIORNO
John Giorno (1936-2019) was an American poet and performance artist. He is considered a leading figure of the Beat Generation, a group of American post-World War II writers who came to prominence in the 1950s through the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired. He briefly worked as a stockbroker in New York before meeting Andy Warhol in 1962. The pair became lovers and Warhol remained an important influence for Giorno’s developments on poetry, performance and recordings. The work of John Giorno embraces two disciplines: poetry and art, which have been a source of mutual fascination and inspiration for the artist. Harboring a close kinship with William Burroughs, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol, for whom he starred in the famous film, Sleep (1963), Giorno is recognized today as one of the most influential poets of his generation. He is also considered the inventor of Performance Poetry, and of Dial-A-Poem - a free telephone line to connect listeners to recordings of original works of poetry. Giorno's words transform to images in his Poem Paintings which are short excerpts from his writings, phrases that have continually haunted him. At the crossroads between poetry, visual arts, music and performance, Giorno's work directs itself toward a broad public, redefining the capabilities of poetry and linguistic form.

TAMARA GONZALES
Tamara Gonzales was born in Madera, ca in 1959, and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Using yard-sale or dollar-store tablecloths, doilies, curtains, and lace collected during her international travels, Gonzales creates abstract paintings by spray painting through lace. Lace allows her to utilize pattern like different brushes while spray paint maintains an economy of surface. Especially important to Gonzales is that inherent in the different lace patterns are many of her prime interests: Baroque churches, rose windows, altars, excess, gaudiness, veiling, and craft. Along with an intensity of color and pattern Gonzales favors the ambiguous moments that occur when the patterning begins to blur. She often paints blind and it is not until she lifts the lace up from the canvas that she can see the drawing. The artist has also used an opened cardboard box as a stencil to create shapes that have morphed into totem figures. Even in these works that use a figure that lends to a narrative, her images stay fixed with the non-representational concerns of painting and a shallow frontal space. Gonzales has had solo exhibitions in New York at Klaus von Nichtssagend, Shoot The Lobster, and Norte Maar. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Coburn Projects in London, and in New York at MoMA PS1, Mixed Greens, Sargent’s Daughters, and Regina Rex, among other venues.

CHRIS MARTIN
Working from a heterogeneous array of cultural traditions, Chris Martin (b. 1954, Washington, D.C.) makes paintings that serve as living documents of the eternal present. He privileges stylistic diversity and immediacy over predetermined aesthetic ideas, generating an art that can be as primal as it is knowing, as vibrantly joyful as it is meditative and hermetic. He has experimented with non-art materials, non-traditional installation, and extreme scale. For this reason, Martin’s career is characterized by an evolution of thematic cycles rather than strictly linear development. The overt influences—musical, spiritual, and art historical—that appear throughout his work are acknowledgments of his desire to return to a common well, or universally accessible source of inspiration. Martin is a revered and influential figure in the artistic community in Brooklyn, New York, where he has been based since the 1980s. Chris Martin was the subject of solo exhibitions at institutions worldwide, including Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2015); Rectangle, Brussels (2015); Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Germany (2011); and Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (2011). Recent group exhibitions include Black Light, Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (2018); Animal Farm, Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich, Connecticut (2017); and Thinking Out Loud: Notes on an Evolving Collection, The Warehouse, Dallas (2017). His paintings are included in the permanent collections of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Museum of Contemporary Art Denver; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, the Netherlands; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among other museums. Paintings, a career-spanning monograph, was published by Skira in 2017. Martin lives and works in Brooklyn and the Catskills, New York.

UGO RONDINONE
Born to Italian parents in Brunnen, Switzerland in 1964, Rondinone moved to Zurich in his late teens to work for multimedia artist Hermann Nitsch. Later he studied art at the Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst in Vienna from 1986 to 1990. Since the 1980s the German Romantic movement has been a primary point of reference for his work, focusing on the relationship between the natural world and the human condition, and nature's sublime. In 1998 Rondinone moved to New York City, where he has lived and worked ever since. It was there that he met his longtime partner the famed writer, poet and performer, John Giorno. Their relationship, which continued until Giorno's passing in 2019, was highly influential on Rondinone's art. Ugo Rondinone rose to international acclaim in the early 1990s with highly varied work. The Swiss-born artist produces paintings, drawings, sculpture (large and small), photography, video, and sound and installation art. He is also a poet, collector and curator.

BRUCE M SHERMAN
Bruce M. Sherman's (b. 1942) anthropomorphic ceramic sculptures combine elements of figuration and abstraction. Each of his hand-thrown works maintains a delicate balance between humor and integrity; surreality and tradition; and function and beauty. He often draws reference to figures of ancient totemic histories, implying an allegorical element but leaving the narrative inconclusive. Common imagery found in Sherman's sculptures include plants, hands, feet, and eyes; arranged in a whimsical yet reverent fashion to celebrate life and nature. Sherman's work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions internationally, at galleries including Kaufmann Repetto in Milan; South Willard Gallery in Los Angeles; White Columns in New York; Sorry We’re Closed Gallery in Brussels; and Nicelle Beauchene Gallery in New York. He has also participated in group exhibitions across the globe, showing work at The Pit in Los Angeles; Tripoli Gallery in East Hampton, NY; Blackston Gallery in New York; NADA Art Fair in Miami, FL; Adams and Ollman Gallery in Portland; Fitzroy Gallery in New York; and more. He lives and works in New York.

DOMENICO ZINDATO
Domenico Zindato (b. 1966) lives and works in Cuernavaca, Mexico. A native of southern Italy’s Reggio Calabria province, Zindato studied theater design in Rome, before withdrawing from university to devote his time to art. In the 1980s, Zindato lived and worked in Berlin, where his interests in photography, theater, music, performance, and image-making came together in multi-media events he organized for the emblamatic venues of Berlin’s post-Punk nightlife. After leaving Europe, he traveled throughout India and Mexico, finally settling in Mexico City. After a decade in the Mexican capital, Zindato moved to his current residence in Cuernavaca. A master draftsman, Zindato has developed a labor-intensive, meticulously detailed drawing technique, using nib pens and fine-haired brushes on paper, to create semi-abstract images packed with mysterious motifs and elaborate patterns. Set against brightly colored backgrounds, Zindato’s drawings read, from a distance, as abstract. Viewed closely, however, they reveal the artist’s intricate pattern-making, with its dynamic swirls, eddies, and enigmatic symbols: eyeballs, floating heads, wave-like ripples and hand-drawn letters. At once extremely precise in its execution and meditative in spirit, Zindato’s art suggests affinities with pre-historic cave paintings, aboriginal art, Buddhist mandalas and Native-American decorative patterns. Zindato’s palette has absorbed the colors of his travels in India and Mexico…vivid ochres, blues, greens and pinks.