The Florence Residency Programme was launched at the beginning of 2023 to support and invite a new generation of artists in Florence, while Michel Parmentier is on show in Milan
Michel Parmentier: Eduardo Secci
Eduardo Secci Gallery is hosting the first Milan exhibition dedicated to Michel Parmentier, in collaboration with Florence’s Galleria il Ponte. The exhibition, curated by Guy Massaux, artist and Parmentier’s assistant, will be on view at the gallery’s Milan spaces at 1 Olmetto Street from January 19, 2023 to April 1, 2023.
On this occasion, core works from the 1960s, 1980s and 1990s will be presented, as well as a collection of images and historical documents that bear witness to the artistic trajectory.
Michel Parmentie origins
Michel Parmentier was born in Paris in 1938 and is an influential figure in the historic avant-garde international abstraction scene. Since early 1965, he has been working with the pliage/dépliage technique, which was introduced into painting in 1960 by Hungarian artist Simon Hantaï.
From 1965 to 1968, his works alternated between painted and unpainted strips, with the same color, varying from year to year. In 1983, when Parmentier returned to painting where he left off, he began alternating colored and uncolored elements again, but then stopped again.
Eduardo Secci Gallery: Florence
In 2013, Secci was founded in Florence, Italy. The space in Florence is thought to be an incubator of creativity. The gallery’s curatorial approach has created international collaborations and partnerships.
In 2021, the gallery started showcasing Post-War avant-gardism. This is due to Titina Maselli. The gallery now presents and develops a multidisciplinary program and a cultivated mix of Modern and Contemporary art that makes them co-existing, by following the cross-cutting nature of art itself.
Eduardo Secci Gallery: Milan
That same year, Secci opened a second location in Milan. This redevelopment allowed the gallery to organize larger exhibitions and focus on site-specific projects. This expansion has given rise to NOVO, a new program based in Milan that addresses contemporary experimentation through the eyes of a single curator (now Pier Paolo Pancotto).
The Florence Residency Programme
The Florence Residency Programme was launched at the beginning of 2023 to support and invite a new generation of artists to live and work in Florence. The residency acts as an incubator for ideas, giving artists the opportunity to interact directly with curators, institutions and collectors and to inspire new ways of exploring artistic discourses.
Previous Exhibition: Chris Soal
The starting point for Chris Soal is the material. He works with materials that have a physical resonance – «they’re often materials I’m in contact with, that have left their imprint on me physically, and then through an observation or a reconsideration have started to become conceptually imprinted in my thinking as something to explore. ’I’ve often said to people that I don’t think I’m necessarily an artist who has good ideas, but rather that work comes from work».
To be present through the process of making, being alert to new suggestions and observations that arise in the making is what Soal does. It happens to be the case that what surrounds him in his daily life, are products of mass consumption, embedded within the social fabric of our time. Through reworking these materials in the studio he’s found a way to engage with contemporary issues.
«My work is investigative rather than prescriptive, allowing the material to lead me forward, and I think that by working in abstraction I allow many points of entry and engagement with what I do, while the use of familiar objects, on close inspection, in my work gives every viewer a sense of affinity», Soal states.
Remains To Be Seen: an exhibition by Chris Soal at Eduardo Secci Gallery
The visceral disgust, the writhing violent potential coiled up in the piece speaks to the fury and hurt that has so scarred the country of South Africa for Soal. «To spill your guts means to tell the truth, I think that in the material there is this reckoning with the ugly truth of alcoholism and the drinking culture which needs to be addressed, particularly amongst men in South Africa», Chris states.
Pieces like Gorgon and Spolia, which are included in Remains To Be Seen, exhibit this form of work well, and in these he has stretched the concept to consider the serpentine connection to Medusa and her Gorgon sisters. A mythological tale of rape and violence which has many interpretations, Soal was intrigued by the embrace of Medusa as a feminist icon by writers such as Hélène Cixous, Mary Valentis and Anne Devane amongst others.
«For myself, while the works have various layers of significance, one that I have explored through the twisted bottle top works, is the interpretation of the myth of Perseus and Medusa as a metaphor for the role of art in society. While the direct encounter with the Gorgon transforms the individual into stone, I believe that art can be the medium – the mirror or the shield – through which we can face complex issues without becoming paralyzed by them».
Hiding in plain sight: Sustainability in a South African context
One way Soal has approached sustainability is by realizing that his work with beer bottle tops leaves an impact on the viewer. Not just because of the deceptive camouflage of the material at first glance, hiding in plain sight, or simply of the feeling of transcendence that is evoked, but also by the realization of the vast quantity of the material and work that went into creating such a piece.
«I wanted to be careful while working with an object that is so prevalent and mass-produced, that I didn’t simply contribute to the system of demand that enables such production». Soal has never paid for a beer bottle top but has collected them ‘used’ from bars, taverns and shebeens, or ‘discarded’ by the factory, intercepting them before they are sent for recycling.
«To consider that some works contain almost one million threaded bottle tops on electric fencing cable, and weigh close to one hundred kilograms, and yet what we use is a mere drop in the ocean of the one point six tons of beer bottle tops marked as faulty by the factory and sent to recycling daily –from one factory in the south of Johannesburg alone», he points out.
Artefacts of over-production by Chris Soal
One positive in this process is the employment such work creates and the financial opportunities it allows to those involved at each layer of the process. Perhaps that’s one role of the artist, to circle the outlying areas of what our society doesn’t consider valuable and of worth, and bring it back into the center for reevaluation.
«I’m interested in how these artefacts of over-production challenge us as viewers to reconsider how we might begin to escape the infinite resources illusion, this spiral of demand which is taxing our environment so much».
Eduardo Secci Gallery
Via Bernardino Zenale, 3, 20123, Milano. Eduardo Secci is an Italian art gallery in Florence – where it was founded in 2013 – and Milan since 2021. It presents a double program featuring the exhibitions of the main gallery and its project space NOVO.
