Momento Zero

Pietro Manzo


Pietro Manzo | Momento Zero
October 7th - November 18th  
Opening October 7th h 6:30 pm
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Starting from images of places where human intervention was strong to the point of being invisible –marble mines, bridges, viaduct- Manzo intervenes taking the views back to their moment zero.

Layers of oil panting on top of photographs get deposited with the sole intention of erasing human intervention on the environment. The artist restores a millenary balance hiding the painful traces of our passage under veils of colour.

What is astounding about Pietro Manzo’s works is the ambiguity -eco of the interventions of Land-Art from the1960’s- that exists between artificial gesture and natural state. The side of a mountain seems like an unnatural screen on top of the majesty of a marble cave. Each work on show is the discordant portrait of an uncorrupted nature, almost unbelievable because of the lack of any kind of civilization, an inconceivable condition for the modern man.

The relationship of Pietro Manzo with the territory is always more tight, physical, to the point of becoming not only an aesthetical connection but also tangible. Like Richard Long’s stones, the artist brings in the gallery the same stone fragments he takes from the gutted mountains. Oil paintings on marble sheets, cave scraps or forensic proofs of murders accomplished in utter indifference.

The project room hosts a sequence of fractals, on which is painted the image of the mountain where they come from. A synecdoche, single drops of blood that contain the whole DNA.