Agostino Iacurci. Gypsoteca

About

Painter, illustrator, engraver, muralist and designer, Augustine Iacurci has created an exhibition project site-specific for the M77 Gallery, proposing spaces as a culmination of a search that lasted almost two years around the theme of color as it was conceived and used in practice of ancient statuary.

The starting point of Iacurci's research is the Greco-Roman sculpture seen in the practice that originally merged the specific materials of sculpture - marble, bronze, wood or terracotta - with color, thus creating a whole that time and an artificial antiquarian taste has in some ways altered if not really canceled, thus giving rise to an idea of classicism made of aseptic marble whiteness or monochromatic patinas. Iacurci is fascinated by the reconstructions of the original Greek and Roman works in their vivid colors and violent, almost psychedelic patterns. With Gypsotecathe artist wanted to create a contemporary personal catalog of the ancient, distant from neoclassicism and monochromy exalted and codified in the eighteenth century by the visionary Joahnn Joachim Winckelmann.

Gypsoteca , a title that explicitly refers to the place where they kept the plaster models of busts statues, heads, reliefs and ancient friezes, is therefore a journey into a parallel universe, full of images and animated visual inventions by color.

The series of works on show captures the echo of remote but universal artistic languages in which color stands as an archaic symbol and, at the same time, connotes a contemporary reality populated by virtual phantoms with which to live. The domestic Lares, the ancient Heroes and the Olympian Deities - bright in their colors - have found in the paintings of Iacurci the sacred places dedicated to them. And the artist offers them gifts and asks for protection.