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Lot Essay
‘The only possible compositional criterion in my works will be one… that, through the possession of an elementary entity – a line, an indefinitely repeatable rhythm and a monochrome surface – is necessary to give the works themselves the concreteness of infinity that may endure the conjugation of time, the only conceivable dimension, the yardsation of our spiritual need.’ ENRICO CASTELLANI
Superficie bianca is a masterful example of Enrico Castellani’s investigation into the nullifying neutrality of the surface. A flexile rhomboid of homogeneous concaves and convexes punctuate a canvas, orchestrated by a field of nails which install reliefs and depressions into its skin. These prickles effectuate a dramatic presentation of light and shade in positive and negative space. Working alongside Piero Manzoni, Castellani sought for a way in which to refute the expressive, gestural qualities of abstract painting and tachisme, striving to attain an aesthetic purity of nothingness and personal negation of artistic hand unprecedentedly encountered in modern art. However, whilst Manzoni used his kaolin-soaked Achromes to alter the materialistic qualities of his media, thus employing a process-led modification to invalidate the control of the artist, Castellani’s sculptural paintings (or painted sculptures) depend on geometry to manifest a rhythmical chiaroscuro and transcendental impersonality. Superficie bianca demonstrates an excellent late tendency in Castellani’s work to create kinetic optical effects in the complex systems of reliefs and counter-reliefs; in the present work, the rhomboid seems to swirl on its geometrical axis, offsetting aligned precision and confounding perceptual expectations.
Castellani neutralises his works by means of decolourisation. In Superficie bianca, thick layers of acrylic paint are smothered over the canvas in a deliberate attempt to mattify its surface. In turn, this further empties the piece of any expressive character in an overt attempt at complete nullification. The neutrality of the monochrome plane contrasts emphatically with its reliefs, intensifying the play of light and darkness. Having previously utilised a polychromatic spectrum of colour in his Superficie paintings, Castellani later settled on monochrome palettes for a pureness of uniformity, desirable because, as Germano Celant has noted, it ‘usually mutes the application of the paint and the brushstroke, and therefore the maker’s gesture, avoiding the description of an action in order to discover an osmotic relationship with the canvas’ (G. Celant, ‘Behind the Picture: Enrico Castellani’, in Enrico Castellani, exh. cat., Fondazione Prada, Milan, 2001, p. 16). Whiteness is Castellani’s abstract ultimatum, recalling an untouched canvas in its purist form; ‘a non-colour, it does not darken or filter light, like reds or blues; rather, it exalts light, and thus will emerge as chromaticism triumphant’ (ibid. p. 17). Aspiring towards aesthetic neutrality, infinite nothingness and artistic negation, Castellani’s monochromatic surfaces produce a compressed silence from which modernism could never return.
Superficie bianca is a masterful example of Enrico Castellani’s investigation into the nullifying neutrality of the surface. A flexile rhomboid of homogeneous concaves and convexes punctuate a canvas, orchestrated by a field of nails which install reliefs and depressions into its skin. These prickles effectuate a dramatic presentation of light and shade in positive and negative space. Working alongside Piero Manzoni, Castellani sought for a way in which to refute the expressive, gestural qualities of abstract painting and tachisme, striving to attain an aesthetic purity of nothingness and personal negation of artistic hand unprecedentedly encountered in modern art. However, whilst Manzoni used his kaolin-soaked Achromes to alter the materialistic qualities of his media, thus employing a process-led modification to invalidate the control of the artist, Castellani’s sculptural paintings (or painted sculptures) depend on geometry to manifest a rhythmical chiaroscuro and transcendental impersonality. Superficie bianca demonstrates an excellent late tendency in Castellani’s work to create kinetic optical effects in the complex systems of reliefs and counter-reliefs; in the present work, the rhomboid seems to swirl on its geometrical axis, offsetting aligned precision and confounding perceptual expectations.
Castellani neutralises his works by means of decolourisation. In Superficie bianca, thick layers of acrylic paint are smothered over the canvas in a deliberate attempt to mattify its surface. In turn, this further empties the piece of any expressive character in an overt attempt at complete nullification. The neutrality of the monochrome plane contrasts emphatically with its reliefs, intensifying the play of light and darkness. Having previously utilised a polychromatic spectrum of colour in his Superficie paintings, Castellani later settled on monochrome palettes for a pureness of uniformity, desirable because, as Germano Celant has noted, it ‘usually mutes the application of the paint and the brushstroke, and therefore the maker’s gesture, avoiding the description of an action in order to discover an osmotic relationship with the canvas’ (G. Celant, ‘Behind the Picture: Enrico Castellani’, in Enrico Castellani, exh. cat., Fondazione Prada, Milan, 2001, p. 16). Whiteness is Castellani’s abstract ultimatum, recalling an untouched canvas in its purist form; ‘a non-colour, it does not darken or filter light, like reds or blues; rather, it exalts light, and thus will emerge as chromaticism triumphant’ (ibid. p. 17). Aspiring towards aesthetic neutrality, infinite nothingness and artistic negation, Castellani’s monochromatic surfaces produce a compressed silence from which modernism could never return.