It is an occasion upon which Sotheby's invites attention to linger because it is the first exhibition in the new headquarters of Palazzo Serbelloni and it is a project aimed at increasing knowledge of the work of Vincenzo Agnetti, highlighting the essential aspects of his artistic research.
Agnetti was a versatile artist who throughout his life researched, imagined, built crossing points between different disciplines that belong to a mental universe that does not allow itself to be imprisoned by limits.
His field of research has ranged between painting, sculpture, criticism, epistemology, technology, literature, with a political and poetic inspiration that determined his path.
The Sotheby's exhibition is a starting point for reflection on his artistic career through some topical moments, in particular three, created five years apart from each other: 1968 Junkie car, 1973 Attached I am sending you a 30 minute audiotape e 1978 Hunting reserve.
1968 Junkie car it is a static theater operation that straddles technology art, language criticism and political criticism. In the same room are shown some works produced by the machine that have a life of their own, “are”, independently of the machine that created them.
1973 Attached I am sending you a 30 minute audiotape accompanied by the voice of Agnetti himself, he brings us back to the themes of the FORGOTTEN TRADOTTO REDUCED.
1978 Hunting reserve: a large canvas triptych that belongs to a series of works on the theme of the relationship between desire and predatory hoarding.
To follow, after the exhibition at Sotheby's, a new exhibition will be inaugurated starting February 5 at the artist's studio and now headquarters of the Archive, in via Macchiavelli 30 in Milan, which will instead present a series of works produced between 1976 and 1980.
For this double occasion, the Vincenzo Agnetti Archive presents Archive 01, the first in a series of small books that aim to document Agnetti's work in its historical dimension and highlight the more visionary and contemporary aspects of his research.
With these publications, the Vincenzo Agnetti Archive intends to divulge the artist's career, presenting from time to time some of his works and inviting the reader not only to look at them but to enter the conceptual universe that produced them and makes them live in between the historical context of origin, contemporaneity and future.
As Vincent said "a one hundred years from now".
In this first book, a sort of introduction, the two exhibitions are presented: the Sotheby's exhibition and the one that will be hosted in the Archive from 5 February 2016.
Some of the Anonymous Listings, published by Agnetti in the magazine Data in the years 1972-73, they open and close the parts of this publication making us savor the visionary sense of those years.
Vincent Agnetti was born in Milan in 1926, graduated in Brera and enrolled in the Piccolo Teatro school. His artistic experiences take place in the context of informal painting and poetry. He began as an informal painter in the early XNUMXs, but he soon abandoned painting and between the end of the XNUMXs and early XNUMXs he was launched towards experimental research and frequented Manzoni and Castellani.
His South American journey took place in 1962: he remained in Argentina until 1967, working in the field of electronic automation and during these years he composed the novel Obsolete.
Back in Milan, he intensified his friendship with the publisher Scheiwiller and frequented the group linked to Azimuth. The production of him is incessant and recognized.
In 1975 in New York, the nerve center of Conceptual Art, he opened a studio in Manhattan and resumed his collaboration with Robert Feldman – in whose gallery he held his first American exhibition Image of an exhibition (1975). In the same year he exhibited works on the concept of equivalence at the Sonnabend in Paris, Events precipitate.
Vincenzo Agnetti died in 1981; he dies one of the greatest exponents of the Italian neo-avant-garde, the undisputed protagonist of Conceptual Art.
