Milano Drawing Week

Renata Fabbri is pleased to announce Carlo Cossignani’s first solo show at the gallery, which is part of the Milano Drawing Week program curated by Collezione Ramo. On the occasion the artist presents a series of works in dialogue with Deposizione, ultimo disegno preparatorio (1927) by Adolfo Wildt.

Carlo Cossignani develops his research starting from the concept of fragment and emptiness, conceived as “potential” substances to be shaped. Emptiness, in particular, is the main subject that defines the recent series of watercolors in which outlines of bodies and anthropomorphic silhouettes intertwine and overlap, resulting in fluid and vanishing compositions. Defined by the duality of the relationship between solid and void, presence and absence, light and shadow, the works come about through the encounter and, at the same time, the distance that separates the fragments, highlighting their reciprocal and interdependent nature. Each empty or incomplete space implies the traces of its lost similarities: the existence of a counterpart that manifests itself in the form of a gap or a “missing” presence waiting to be completed by the gaze of the observer.

Dreamlike and with a transcendental aurea, the works on show explore the formal and evocative potential typical of the drawing on paper and give life to subtle relations and ephemeral moments, like the transposition of a ray of light filtering through. The visual reproduction of an immaterial phenomena is for the artist the expedient for a repetitive and almost obsessive research into the balance between the elements. The emptiness becomes a tool of continuity between inside and outside, between a personal and collective dimension.

Selected by the artist from the Collezione Ramo’s works, the preparatory drawing Deposizione by the sculptor Adolfo Wildt dialogues with Cossignani’s works through formal affinities and links. Bound by a play of light and dark and by abstract representations that define both the compositional processes, the works on show look into the inner and instinctive nature of the drawing itself, creating an almost intimate relationship with the exhibition space; at the same time opening up the gaze of the observer to the need to rethink form as a process of deformation and the figure as a process of disfiguring.

Milano Drawing Week