“Sistemi Semplici” (Simple Systems) is a group exhibition, conceived by Lia Rumma and Gigiotto Del Vecchio, that will open at Lia Rumma Gallery in Milan on 29 May 2024.
The starting point of the exhibition is a reflection on the work of Tomás Maldonado, the Argentinian philosopher, artist and designer, and on the rational conception of form, colour and their different perceptions. Maldonado has steered education about art and design towards systemic thought in order to achieve a balance between science and design, theory and practice, incorporating methods of planning and the principles of perception and semiotics. In parallel to Maldonado’s oeuvre the exhibition also features the work of a group of artists close in age and thought – Piero Dorazio, Enzo Mari, Bruno Munari, Enrico Castellani and Donald Judd – culminating in more recent names who are leading figures of the contemporary evolution of this modular process.
These include the “televisual” abstraction of Heimo Zobernig, the reference of the pixels of the first video games (Tetris?) in the works of Angela Bulloch and the modules and other possibilities of the Internet which, in the late 1990s, represented for Daniel Pflumm the exhange of relations and the political possibility of altering information until it is turned into something purer, stripped of all forms of communicative frills.
“Sistemi Semplici” can unquestionably be defined as an exhibition of work by artists who, ranging from the post-World War II period to twenty-first century, share the desire to free art from a psychological or realistic dimension, with a special focus on signs and form which become the sole means of expression.
We thank the artists and Studio Angela Bulloch; Galleria Corraini; Galerie Nagel Draxler, Berlin | Cologne | Munich; Carlo Feltrinelli; kaufmann repetto, Milan | New York; Lorenzelli Arte, Milan; Galleria Massimo and Francesca Minini, Milan | Brescia and Eredi Enzo Mari; Galerie Neu, Berlin; Repetto Gallery, Lugano; Esther Schipper, Berlin | Paris | Seoul; Paolo Curti and Annamaria Gambuzzi; Daniele Milvio and Giorgia Garzilli.
