Mimmo Paladino

Mimmo Scognamiglio, Naples
Through March 15

The majority of works presented by Mimmo Paladino in the exhibition Architettura are characterized by a working method that tends to recompose volumes utilizing completely new juxtapositions of planes. These are complex combinations in which the surfaces are laden with primitive elements and the harmonious markings that distinguish his work and grace both sides of his canvases.

His explorations into ways of rendering painting dynamic have led him to experiment with extroversion and the superimposition of surfaces, resulting in a form of painting so closely blended with sculpture that it has become almost a “confusion” of media; a dialogue so intimate that the languages have become contaminated. His recent works adopt three-dimensional compositional forms on which primitive and allegorical characters are depicted.

The figures interact with the surrounding space to provoke rather architectonic effects: in his plastics, and small to medium scale canvases, certain parts actually jut out. The artist moves easily between the abstract and the figurative. He softens the sharp edges on geometric figures by the introduction of signs of “breaking” on the sides. These might be details of a human face, as is the case with the huge bronze blocks on display in the first room of the gallery. Utilizing materials of various kinds (crushed cardboard, plaster, wood, and iron) Paladino transforms his paintings—in this case used as works in continual evolution—into chance structures.

They rise up from the flat plane in flexible, enveloping permutations, as shells containing anthropomorphic bronze cast fragments; or they are distinguished by a crocodile—a recurrent motif in the artist’s work—now depicted as headless and represented as a being submerged in material, resurfacing from the past.




Francesco Galdieri
Translation by Rosalind Furness