At the Maramotti Collection, Manuel Cerutti's works dedicated to fatherhood

From March 10 to July 28, 2024, Turin-based painter Manuele Cerutti (Turin, 1976) is exhibiting his latest series of paintings and works on paper, entitled QUEM GENUIT ADORAVIT, at the Pattern Room of Collezione Maramotti in Reggio Emilia. This art project stems from the intensity of the artist’s personal experiences, particularly his fatherhood and the early years of his son’s life, and focuses on a creation with childlike features, inspired by the elements of nature. Cerutti transformed common objects found in his studio, such as old coffee pots, twisted pipes and sticks, plastic scraps, chicken bones and stools, into living still lifes. Through new compositions, these objects come to life, revealing a suspended and sacred time.

A central theme of this exhibition is the depiction of a black plastic sheet knotted around the leg of a human figure. This wrap, interpreted as a natural extension of the body, recalls the technique of layering, which induces the growth of new plants from a point on the stem or branch of the mother plant. This method of agamic reproduction, which consists of the separation of any part of the parent individual’s body, connects to the artist’s allegorical and mythological exploration of parthenogenesis, a type of reproduction in which the egg cell is not linked to the fertilizing act.

In the context of ancient mythology’s memories of extraordinary, almost monstrous births, the individual at the center of Cerutti’s visual narrative takes on the guise of the artist himself, whose images, subject to a constant process of verification and multiplication, extend to become universal. The protagonist of these works is afflicted with a lingering wound in his leg: a part of himself that he delicately wraps with a cloth, a fecund wound that he constantly cares for, an unexpected source of new life and direction. This archetypal figure eludes the definition of a contemporary hero, embodying rather a diversity from the normal, an interruption of linear development that suggests a sense of inadequacy and fragility.

Often depicted as an out-of-balance element in detailed representations articulated to the point of seeming real, he seeks to assimilate the way children perceive the world, recognizing in movement and asymmetrical advancement a path to new possibilities.

The territory he traverses, beyond his studio, is the landscape on the fringes of Turin, those places familiar to the artist permeated by entropy, where the city merges with the countryside. Here, rivers flow under overpasses, industrial ruins mingle with wasteland, and a concrete underpass can magically transform into a monumental portal inspired by a science fiction tale.

However, the territory explored by Cerutti is first and foremost the painting itself, a “continuous imprint of making,” as the artist calls it. Whether it is the subject that summons its sharp presence on the canvas or the painting process, with its layers, glazes and erasures, that guides the composition, the relentless search in pictorial language resonates in the itinerary of the protagonists of these works. Between involvement and detachment, merits and faults, attempts at recovery and renunciation, it heads toward the manifestation of an inexpressible attachment, as the title of the exhibition suggests, “He Adored the One He Generated.” It is a journey that can lead to wonder, creating new connections to one’s relationship with the world.

On the occasion of the exhibition, a book will be published with contributions by sociologist Gian Antonio Gilli, poet and writer Valerio Magrelli and Elena Volpato, curator and curator at GAM - Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Torino.

At the Maramotti Collection, Manuel Cerutti's works dedicated to fatherhood

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