Alfredo Pirri / Robin Rhode

Through his works Alfredo Pirri incites us to pay attention to what sensible, visible, invisible surrounds us in our proceeding in a complex world, both of natural (dawn, sunset, rain, light) and of social phenomena. Light and colour are protagonists of Alfredo Pirri’s gift for narrating, with manifold variations in each exhibit and in the ways the onlooker is attracted by the rhythms and tones this narration develops.
In 2003, in his personal VERSO N at Galleria Tucci Russo, the artist displayed some works composed of single and assembled elements, each being an image complete in itself and in mutual relationship, in a narrative tension that recalled the mutations of the important moments of the day, like dawn and sunset.

The work Leggio in the current exhibition develops this theme with different materials: a fretworked plane, illuminated from below and leaning on the wall, becomes the protagonist of the narration of the luminous variation projected on the wall.
The narration of light and colour goes on with the works named Canti, like the exhibition, and understood as “Little monuments to the cinema”, according to the artist’s definition. They take their shape from the cast of an unrolled film that becomes a conic mark recalling the shape of the projected light. Each work draws the attention on different stages of the perception: narration and image, “unreal” reality and time, the cone of light dazzling the onlooker and the sound evoked.
Beside Canti the sculpture Le jardin féerique whose title takes up the name of a piece by Maurice Ravel. Il Giardino Fatato is a transparent parallelepiped split in layers crossed by a conic rising whirl of stained light on a row of white feathers serving both as reflectors and screens.
A reference to the recent public installations are the projects for Ultimi passi-Foro di Cesare, Roma 2007, preliminary studies for the work set in the archaeological site and being part of a cycle of works made by the artist starting from 2002, in sites of particular historical, religious and commemorative interest.

Alfredo Pirri was born in Cosenza in 1957, lives and works in Rome.
Among his main exhibitions there is his participation in Aperto 88, Biennale di Venezia, 1988; Korrespondenzen, Walter Gropius Bau, Berlin, 1992; Viaggio a Citera, Biennale di Venezia, 1993; Rosa e Giallo, Le Creux de l’Enfer, Thiers et Les Halles Centrales, Rennes, 1993; International Critic’s Choice, Mitchell Museum, Illinois, USA, 1993; Oltre Luogo, Museo di Palazzo Fabroni, Pistoia, 1995; Via d’Ombra a Villa Medici, Rome, 2000 (catalogue); Beyond (con Miroslaw Balka), The Bunker Sztuki Contemporary Art Gallery, Krakovia, 2007 (catalogue); Come in terra così in cielo al Centro Arti Visive Pescheria di Pesaro, 2007 (catalogue).
This is his fifth personal at Galleria Tucci Russo: GAS, 1990; PER NOI, 1992; PAX, (con Miroslaw Balka), 1996 and VERSO N, 2003.