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拍品专文
In Cellotex, Alberto Burri has presented the viewer with a monumental painting, created from a seeming monochrome yet in fact articulated through the use of different finishes and textures. Concentric loops invade and punctuate the space, adding a dynamic rhythm to it and leading our eyes across the great space of the support. Despite being black on black, echoing the tradition of Kasimir Malevich, these arches, which appear like ripples coming in from the edge of the picture, relieve the surface, an effect that is heightened by the rich, tactile variation of texture that articulates it. Instead of being illustrative, they exist in order to highlight the potential of the material itself.
It was during the late 1970s that Burri turned towards 'cellotex', a form of hardboard made of wood particles compacted together with glue and other additives, as a material in its own right. Formerly, he had used it as the support upon which he had created other works, for instance some of his acrylics and his Cretti. Now, he began to explore the material of the cellotex itself. In Cellotex, he has strenuously and meticulously worked the surface in order to create different visual effects which are
crucially also textural effects. In essence, it is by a process of reduction, of removing parts of the surface, that he has revealed the properties of this material. For this reason, in his Cellotex series, he would often use tools as diametrically opposed as the paint brush and the chisel.
Looking at the vast, landscape-like expanse of Cellotex, with the rings of one texture interrupting the main bulk of the surface, it is clear that Burri's interventions have granted this humble board a new status, allowing it an apotheosis. 'I chose to use poor materials to prove that they could still be useful,' Burri once said. 'The poorness of a medium is not a symbol: it is a device for painting' (Burri, quoted in Alberto Burri: A Retrospective View 1948-77, exh. cat., Los Angeles, 1977, p. 72). At the same time, it is the very poorness of the material that emphasises the distance that, through Burri's intervention, it has travelled, allowing the cellotex to expose and revel in its own raw beauty. Burri, by presenting the cellotex in this way, reveals the extent to which even this material has its own intrinsic aesthetic value, and by extension demands that we open our eyes to the beauty that is all around us, all too often overlooked.
It was during the late 1970s that Burri turned towards 'cellotex', a form of hardboard made of wood particles compacted together with glue and other additives, as a material in its own right. Formerly, he had used it as the support upon which he had created other works, for instance some of his acrylics and his Cretti. Now, he began to explore the material of the cellotex itself. In Cellotex, he has strenuously and meticulously worked the surface in order to create different visual effects which are
crucially also textural effects. In essence, it is by a process of reduction, of removing parts of the surface, that he has revealed the properties of this material. For this reason, in his Cellotex series, he would often use tools as diametrically opposed as the paint brush and the chisel.
Looking at the vast, landscape-like expanse of Cellotex, with the rings of one texture interrupting the main bulk of the surface, it is clear that Burri's interventions have granted this humble board a new status, allowing it an apotheosis. 'I chose to use poor materials to prove that they could still be useful,' Burri once said. 'The poorness of a medium is not a symbol: it is a device for painting' (Burri, quoted in Alberto Burri: A Retrospective View 1948-77, exh. cat., Los Angeles, 1977, p. 72). At the same time, it is the very poorness of the material that emphasises the distance that, through Burri's intervention, it has travelled, allowing the cellotex to expose and revel in its own raw beauty. Burri, by presenting the cellotex in this way, reveals the extent to which even this material has its own intrinsic aesthetic value, and by extension demands that we open our eyes to the beauty that is all around us, all too often overlooked.