MIMMO PALADINO
SCULPTURES
JUNE 27 – JULY 26, 2007
OPENING: WEDNESDAY JUNE 27 FROM 7 TO 8:30 PM

Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition of new sculpture and painting by Italian artist, Mimmo Paladino, opening the 28th June through July 26th.
Paladino is an internationally known artist and member of the Transavantguardia generation. His iconic work is seen throughout the world in major museums and private collections.

In this new group of works, he presents four black bronze ellipses whose forms suggest large fins, or wing structures, they are balanced on a rounded centre and tip towards the ground as if in flight. Each of the four has different attributes, like Renaissance paintings in fact. One leans toward the ground with an elongated rifle spanning across the top. Another perches on a man’s head, a third shows a hand leaning on what might be the curve of a belly, or a flattened loaf of bread, and a fourth is quite pure with only a small head balanced precariously atop of one of the fins.

Observing this scene, Paladino has also created an allegorical standing figure with its back against the wall and tree branches extending from its core in an electrifying structure. The delicate lines of the branches cut the space as if they were line drawings in the air. The strange and melancholic aspect of this looming persona over the floor sculptures provides a contrast to the hovering forms.

Born in 1948 in Benevento, Italy, Paladino is well known for his use of classical forms in a highly personal vocabulary that incorporates aspects of Etruscan forms, with abstract sculptural elements. His paintings often juxtapose pale earth tones with gold and black, or in some cases brightly painted abstract fields with more figurative overlays. His artistry draws from many sources, but always surprises with elegant and unusual combination of images.

As Eleonora Louis wrote in the most recent sculpture catalogue, “ The work shares a state of suspension between abstract and figurative forms. Dealing with the difficulty of abstraction and its links to representational art, Paladino works within the range of the development of modern art. In particular it is the different concepts of nonrepresentational art which find expression---on the one hand a geometrical abstraction and on the other an art which is regarded as a spiritual alternative relating to cosmos, myths, mysticism and the spirit.”

For further information, please contact Jill Silverman van Coenegrachts (+331 42 72 99 00 or [email protected]). To obtain visual elements, please contact Guillaume Benaich, [email protected].