Until May 25, 2018, the Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro in Milan hosts the solo show by Donato Piccolo (Rome, 1976), entitled Imprévisible.
The curatorship of the 2018 Project Rooms was entrusted to Flavio Arensi, who built a project in three acts, Proust's room, an excuse to look at the events of society and man through the sounds, absences and presences of the past as of the future. The three moments that will follow one another in this room will form a single reflection on the role of sculpture in this historical moment. As Arensi states, “with the three artists involved in the 2018 Project Room we intend to recover, through their work, the idea of an enlarged conscience that does not use the more traditional means of sculpture but seeks out the deepest concepts through technology and the space".
For the first of the three appointments, Donato Piccolo presents a group of unpublished works collected under the name of Imprévisible, a French term produced by the union of unpredictable and invisible, which well summarizes the short circuit between nature and artifice that characterizes the insect-machines of the Roman artist.
The analysis of the existential gap that distinguishes man from natural and artificial reality, in relation to the dimension of time, has always been at the center of Piccolo's reflection, who brings his robotic sculptures to the Foundation, objects/subjects that will be able to relate to visitors. The robotic mechanisms and artificial intelligence will in fact allow the works to move, recording the reactions of the public and, on the basis of these, setting the consequent actions. Piccolo's sculptures, which seem to learn and act autonomously, define the field of human absence.
Donato Piccolo (1976) works between Rome, where he was born and lives, Berlin and New York. He has participated in the 52nd and 54th Venice Biennale and exhibited in important museums around the world, including: Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg (Russia, 2017); Himalayas Art Center, Shanghai (China, 2017); MAXXI, Rome (Italy, 2017); Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales, Havana (Cuba, 2016).
Image: Donato Piccolo, triptych for a headache 2007 fiberglass, glass, eggs, nebulizator ultrasound, water, iron, pyrex, dim. 180cm each, Biennale Photo by Beatriz Susana Soriano
