.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This work is registered in Associazione Paolo Scheggi, Milan and will be published in the forthcoming Catalogue Raisonné of the works by Paolo Scheggi, curated by Luca Massimo Barbero.
Intersuperficie curva presents the viewer with a mesmerizing interplay of light and space, perfectly illustrating Paolo Scheggi's radical introduction of new perceptual and experiential dimensions into the realm of art. As light passes over and through the surface relief and breaks into shadows, the static forms render ceaseless and fluid movement. An heir to Lucio Fontana’s cut canvases and Piero Manzoni’s Achromes, Scheggi cuts through the white monochrome canvas with great precision to create circular voids that reveal to us the contours of two further superimposed canvases, themselves characterized by elliptic openings. Whereas Fontana’s cut terminates his artistic and conceptual act and prompts the viewer to look beyond the canvas, Scheggi’s voids give rise to a dynamic, sculptural and experiential field within the very structure of the canvas. It is this endless, hypnotising optical effect that invites the viewer's eye to roam across the surface of the work, seeking new relationships between volume and shadow.
Executed in 1964, this work was created at the height of the artist’s short but prolific career. It was upon moving to Milan, one of Europe's most progressive centres for art, that the young artist embarked upon various three-dimensional mixed media experimentations. He first developed his now iconic Intersuperfici (Intersurfaces), alternatively called Zone Riflesse (Reflected Zones), in 1962 as concrete, independent objects. With its curved apertures, the present indeed produces a very real sense of depth that defies the illusionistic sense of space espoused by traditional easel painting. Devoid of reference to figurative or abstract sources and all traces of the artist's hand, Intersuperficie curva thereby perfectly encapsulates the concerns of 'Pittura Oggetto', or ‘objectual painting’, a term coined by Italian art critic Gillo Dorfles. Alongside artists such as Agostino Bonalumi, and Enrico Castellani, Dorfles acknowledged Scheggi as an important exponent of this tendency that he perceived as going beyond both representation and abstraction in order to embrace the object-nature of painting. Challenging the perceived irrationality of the dominating Informel movement, Scheggi’s artistic output also found much in common with the experimental visual research pursued by the Zero and Nul movement, and by the exponents of Op and Kinetic Art.
Intersuperficie curva presents the viewer with a mesmerizing interplay of light and space, perfectly illustrating Paolo Scheggi's radical introduction of new perceptual and experiential dimensions into the realm of art. As light passes over and through the surface relief and breaks into shadows, the static forms render ceaseless and fluid movement. An heir to Lucio Fontana’s cut canvases and Piero Manzoni’s Achromes, Scheggi cuts through the white monochrome canvas with great precision to create circular voids that reveal to us the contours of two further superimposed canvases, themselves characterized by elliptic openings. Whereas Fontana’s cut terminates his artistic and conceptual act and prompts the viewer to look beyond the canvas, Scheggi’s voids give rise to a dynamic, sculptural and experiential field within the very structure of the canvas. It is this endless, hypnotising optical effect that invites the viewer's eye to roam across the surface of the work, seeking new relationships between volume and shadow.
Executed in 1964, this work was created at the height of the artist’s short but prolific career. It was upon moving to Milan, one of Europe's most progressive centres for art, that the young artist embarked upon various three-dimensional mixed media experimentations. He first developed his now iconic Intersuperfici (Intersurfaces), alternatively called Zone Riflesse (Reflected Zones), in 1962 as concrete, independent objects. With its curved apertures, the present indeed produces a very real sense of depth that defies the illusionistic sense of space espoused by traditional easel painting. Devoid of reference to figurative or abstract sources and all traces of the artist's hand, Intersuperficie curva thereby perfectly encapsulates the concerns of 'Pittura Oggetto', or ‘objectual painting’, a term coined by Italian art critic Gillo Dorfles. Alongside artists such as Agostino Bonalumi, and Enrico Castellani, Dorfles acknowledged Scheggi as an important exponent of this tendency that he perceived as going beyond both representation and abstraction in order to embrace the object-nature of painting. Challenging the perceived irrationality of the dominating Informel movement, Scheggi’s artistic output also found much in common with the experimental visual research pursued by the Zero and Nul movement, and by the exponents of Op and Kinetic Art.