Giuseppe Uncini's works on the theme of shadows on display in Milan

The Marconi Foundation in Milan is hosting from October 17 to December 21, 2019 the exhibition Giuseppe Uncini. The Conquest of Shadow dedicated to the work of Giuseppe Uncini (Fabriano, 1929 - Trevi, 2008) between 1968 and 1977. This exhibition project, in collaboration with theUncini Archive, four years after the 2015 exhibition focused on drawing, now aims to document the evolution of the artist’s long and thorough investigation of the theme of shadows. The starting point is the exhibition, titled precisely Shadows, which takes place in 1976 at Studio Marconi and for which the artist creates Grande parete Studio Marconi MT 6, expressly designed for the Milanese gallery. This work is part of the period in which Uncini decides to shift his attention from the “construction of objects” to the “construction of shadow,” from the real form of the constructed object, to its virtual form. In this new perspective he transforms what has always been perceived as ambiguous and labile into a substantial element of the work, something stable, visibly and tactilely concrete. Light and shadow are thus placed on the same level of value and considered “materials” in the same way, allowing for a new and unprecedented reading of the work. This discovery, a dominant motif of his research until the 1980s, also leads him to reflect on the antinomies light-shadow, full-empty, presence-absence. It is thus space that becomes the material of the artist’s constructive act, and there is no longer any distinction between making painting and making sculpture.

“Until then,” Uncini himself stated in 1998, “I had thought I was and wanted to be a painter. Then this conviction little by little fell under my hands. Later I became, I am told, a sculptor. I still don’t believe it and I feel I’m between sculpture and painting and I’m perfectly fine with that, there’s no problem in that.” For all its majesty, the Great Wall represents a pinnacle moment in Uncini’s research and marks his definitive conquest of that “fleeting essence” that is now an integral part of the work itself.

“The shadow, this fleeting essence, this negativity of the sign, which is too often ignored or passed over in silence, which almost always counts only as a passive factor, of absence, at most a completion of theinvestigation,” wrote Gillo Dorfles in 1976, “had instead to constitute, at some point, the center of the artist’s investigations; not already as an artifice for a perspective or naturalistic rendering, but as the ’highlighting’ (not only metaphorically) of a substantial element of the work.”

The exhibition presents a nucleus of works, ranging from 1968 to 1977, with the aim of providing a complete excursus on Uncini’s creative production in this time frame. All the main declinations of the artist’s assiduous need to investigate the virtual dimension of the projection of volumes will thus be reviewed: from the first Chair with Shadow and Window with Shadow (1968), to Columns with Shadow (1969), Shadow of a Suspended Cube (1973), Wall with Shadow T.23 (1976).To these are added some significant works from the Uncini Archive collection: Bricks with Shadow No. 12 (1969), Interrupted Wall (1971), Shadow of Two Parallelepipeds T.1 (1972), Shadow of a Parallelepiped M.29 and Shadow of Three Squares M.30 (1975). On display alongside the Great Wall will be the original maquette of the work, made of concrete and wood laminate (1975-1976), some documentary photos taken during the execution of the work, and a selection of drawings made in the same years, since in Uncini, drawing has played a role of primary importance in the design of his work since the beginning of his activity.

A volume on the theme of shadows, edited by Bruno Corà, and in collaboration with the Uncini Archive, will follow the exhibition.

For all information you can visit the official website of the Marconi Foundation.

Pictured: large wall Studio Marconi MT.6 (1976), concrete and wood laminate, 268 x 720 x 140 cm

Giuseppe Uncini's works on the theme of shadows on display in Milan

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