Somewhere nowhere - Andrea Marchesini

Starting May 24, through June 18, 2023, MA-EC Gallery (Palazzo Durini, via Santa Maria Valle 2) presents the solo exhibition Somewhere Nowhere by artist Andrea Marchesini curated by Daniela Pronestì and Un Quadro di Te A.p.s.

A city attentive to the contemporary art scene, Milan hosts for the first time the artist from Vicenza, who presents himself with a new pictorial cycle specially designed for the occasion consisting of a selection of 32 works created in mixed media on paper and canvas.

Always oriented to experience the creative act as an alchemical procedure, as a transmutation of artistic mediums, and even before that of thought, into living, pulsating matter, imbued with visions and memories, in this case, too, Marchesini dons the shoes of the alchemist to perform an even more radical action: To make visible an elsewhere-the "somewhere nowhere" to which the title alludes-that escapes the temporality of the "here and now" to situate itself "in a space without depth and in a time without duration," says exhibition curator Daniela Pronestì. An elsewhere outside and inside the artist, an imaginary dimension, parallel, and at the same time close and concrete, as close and concrete are the presences that take shape in these works. "Characters who play a role," the curator continues, "the king, the queen, the hunter, the nomad, the shepherd, the magician, within stories possible only in a fantastic elsewhere; at other times, however, they take shape as alter egos of the artist, facets of his personality that, while conquering the evidence of form and color, continue to dialogue with the invisible, with the intangibility of a memory or with the vagueness of a dreamed image.

Thus, at the origin of the creative process there is a continuous flow of "moments, instants, snapshots coming from my consciousness," Marchesini clarifies, "and processed by the psyche but which then take on continually different meanings depending on the viewer and the psychophysical state of the person himself: fragments that come from somewhere and nowhere but exist in their mutability. On this path from multiplicity to unity, from chaos to harmony, "Marchesini recovers, fractionates, joins, accords mental abstractions that are converted into concrete actions," Daniela Pronestì continues, "knowing full well that the one reached at the end of the creative act will only be a momentary landing place. It is like looking in a mirror and having the impression that the image reflected in it coincides in every way with one's inner image. In that instant, distance becomes proximity, otherness identity, fragmentation unity. But it is an illusion that soon reveals its groundlessness."