1 - 14 June 2021 | Online Viewing Room by Artsy
“After finishing my military service I went to work in a body shop with the idea of learning how to form and shape sheet metal. That was when my ideas began to become clearer; what I wanted to do was replace the material that I used for painting – pigments – with another, technological, medium.”
- Piero Fogliati
Osart Gallery is delighted to present a solo show devoted to the Piedmontese artist Piero Fogliati (1930-2016).
Piero Fogliati was unique as an artist in that he succeeded in using elementary ‘fragments of technology’ to create complex machines that temporarily produce inconceivable magical effects of sound and light.
These are sculptural machines that intrigue and perplex the observer when they are inactive, transforming themselves in a poetically spectacular and unpredictable manner. His sculptures/installations, designed from the 1960s on, accompany us in the discovery of surprising spectacles that Fogliati himself defined as ‘garments placed on scientific objects’. These works, which were hand-crafted by the artist, once activated succeed in triggering an interaction that engages both work and observer, so that the sound-vision spectacle fuses with the emotions and memories of every one of us.
A series of drawings are also on display, to better explain the creative process and the perfection of Fogliati’s work. On the one hand these illustrate the design and creation of his sculptures/installations, while on the other hand they also highlight his incredible imagination in surprising new images. These images recall the Città Fantastica, the Fantastic City projected in his mind, filled with the very works that are now actually on display.
All the works on display involve the viewer at multisensory level. They move, vibrate and change depending on the light or the movement of the air; they breathe and they make sound. Fogliati’s utopian machines come to life, and succeed in arousing the most unexpected wonder.