05 : PAOLA PEZZI BIOGRAPHY
Born in Brescia in 1963, Paola Pezzi lives and works in Milan. Student at the “Accademiadi Brera” of Milan, she attended the art course of Luciano Fabro and Zeno Birolli incorporating and customizing the lessons of
Art Povera, which have her a quick understanding of contemporary artistic vanguards. Since the early nineties Paola Pezzi has exhibited regularly in Italy and abroad, mainly at Franco Toselli Gallery in Milan, Ca’di frà Gallery, Cardi Gallery in Milan, Massimo Minimi Gallery in her hometown of Brescia in Italy, and the Simons Studio in Paris. She regularly takes part in international exhibitions and is often quoted in articles for many specialized magazines such as Juliet, Tema Celeste, Flash Art, Abitare and Espresso.
“I’m not able to track down one specific moment that marks the start of my artistic adventure because, the work, all the works I have done are part of a life journey, an attitude driven by necessity. Existential energy is at the base of everything, as much as my research; the idea of an original nucleus from the earth's genesis remains at the root of my work. It evolves over the years, opening and changing, acquiring new energies, new sources, requiring new materials according to how I wish to express myself. A continuous and dynamic flow, in which life enters the world of art, and takes its form; where art becomes an experience of life, a statement about the world. A dialogue that takes form and emerges from my studio”.
Paola Pezzi
The works of Paola Pezzi are on show in the collections of Saatchi & Saatchi, the Modern and Contemporary Art Gallery of Palazzo Forti of Verona, the Civic Modern Art Gallery of Gallarate, The National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art of Roma, the collection Panza of Biumo, Varese, and at the headquarter of B.N.L Bank of Milan and Roma, the Banca Commerciale Italiana, and Banca Intesa.
Paola Pezzi’s work finds ways to give an organic shape and independent qualification to the elementary nature of a given material, a fragment, or a simple thing, and render it capable of generating attraction. What distinguishes her work is thus a particularizing attitude toward that “etant donné” that enabled Duchamp to give new meaning to every object on the strength of its extraneation and decontextualization from its presumable destiny. In different ways, without neglecting the elaboration of the materials taken under her care, and above all with a change in the point of view in considering them, rejecting their original function, Pezzi reveals their other possible lives and forms.
The progress of her research until now and the levels of expression achieved in recent years with her work place her among the rising stars of art who – after absorbing an essentially phenomenological tradition – have succeeded in evolving their experimental potential to the extent of bringing forth new qualities of sensitivity that the various existing fabrications make possible. Thus the verbs of her action are cut, surround, fold, compress, sharpen : in other words, imagine the transformations and give rein to every lantency.
Bruno Corà, Art Critic
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