Milano: Omar Galliani at Palazzo Reale, from 13 July to 24 September

Milano: Omar Galliani at Palazzo Reale, from 13 July to 24 September.

"If all the drawings returned home folding one over the other and in looking at each other they retraced the threads of time; at what time would they go back? In which of the many geographies on the map should we identify the borders?" Omar Galliani

Il 13 July Royal Palace a Milano present an monographic exhibition by Omar Galliani, recognized master of drawing, which will remain open to the public with free admission Until 24 September 2023.

The exposure Omar Galliani. “Diachronic. The suspended time", Edited by Flavio Caroli and Vera Agosti, is promoted by the Municipality of Milano-Culture is produced and organized by Palazzo Reale and Archivio Omar Galliani.

Omar Galliani (Montecchio Emilia, Reggio Emilia, 1954) believes in the eternity of the design, which survives its creator and stands the test of time. A “infinite design“, which becomes a unique, absolute, immense work, which has its own time, expanded like its dimensions, which becomes a religion and comes “recited” daily like a mantra; a design that the artist was able to reinvent and renew.

The title of the exhibition – Diachronic – is borrowed from linguistics and refers to the study of languages ​​in their historical development. The subtitle – Time suspended – alludes to resistance of the artist's doing, which in an increasingly digitalized and dematerialized world, supports the beauty of the physicality of the work of art.

Il exhibition itinerary, developed on the main floor of the Royal Palace, includes over 100 works, from the end of the seventies to today. A excursus through i works by Galliani presented in the Biennials of Venice, Paris, San Paolo, Prague, Tokyo, Beijing, as part of museum exhibitions, with the addition of a selection of unpublished works, created specifically for the Milanese exhibition. In addition to the drawings, immersed in the glittering black of the graphite and conveyed in the intimate dimension of the paper or in the monumentality of the engraved or scratched poplar board, there are Also present in the exhibition are some oil on canvas works which, despite the radical choice of drawing, the artist painted in the 1980s and, thereafter, every winter, giving life to only one large pictorial work a year, when the snow falls on the Po Valley.

To do from guide, within a non-chronological itinerary, which will however allow the visitor to follow the evolution of the works over time, will mainly be thematic and emotional suggestions, which Flavio Caroli divides into “universes worlds“, capable of nourishing the artist's thoughts and imagination: symbolic universe, mythical universe, psychological universe, erotic universe, scientific universe, landscape universe.

"Galliani's poetics today – writes Vera Agosti – takes inspiration from the history of art, fashion, cinema or simple everyday life, thanks to images encountered by chance, on the road, in airports in the East and West. And also his travels around the world, particularly in Asia, which contaminate his imagination and to which a large room in the Royal Palace is dedicated".

The image guide of the exposure is Natural Rerum (2020), a large panel that takes its title from the poem by Tito Lucrezio Caro. The work depicts a young woman and a hummingbird, symbol of conjunction between heaven and earth, between the physical and spiritual world.

Among main works on display, Omar Roma Love of the 2012 – a Siamese female head, a bifid spine, a mirrored Colosseum – and La Princess Lyu Ji in its fifteen years of age, exhibited in the solo show promoted by the Caffè Florian in Venice in 2014. This last painting is based on an ancient legend that Galliani learned about in the town of Xi'an. What remains of the girl are roses and scissors, shoes and knives, a visual synecdoche of femininity and narration. In China the artist has exhibited in the main museums of the country, in twelve cities, and his connection with the East combined with the influence of those places and those cultures on his work are clearly present in the exhibition.

We continue with a great mantra of the nineties, played between mystery of the black of graphite and the sacredness of engraved gold leaf. Following, NGC/7419 from 2020-2021, a particularly heartfelt work, born from a recurring dream following the loss of his son Massimiliano, also an artist. A number constantly returned to mind: 7419; searching online it turned out to be a set of stars in the constellation of Cepheus, shaped like a pencil. The stars, of carbon and gold, shine in the pencil on panel work, silent and lyrical witnesses of those mysteries that we are not allowed to know. The large installation, however, was created during the lockdown days Stolen kisses / Covid 19, composed by sixty drawings of 50×50 centimetres. These are the kisses that have been missing during the period of forced closure and social distancing. Passionate and sensual kisses, like the cinematographic ones, images taken from the web made delicate and dreamlike by the softness of the charcoal and the graphite which changes according to the refraction of the light. And it is precisely to light that the Maestro dedicates his large triptych Riflessi of 2022-2023, an unpublished work in its entirety, which establishes his relationship with the landscape. In the end Great Italian design, a monumental work in pencil on poplar panel (500×630 cm), exhibited at the State Archives of Turin in 2005, in dialogue with a small announcing angel by Leonardo (present in the preparatory study for the Virgin of the Rocks), exhibited at the Royal Library.

With this exhibition, Omar Galliani highlights contacts with the past, without however shying away from the present, with an eye towards the future.

La show is accompanied by a corsiero publisher catalogue, edited by Vera Agosti, with unpublished texts by Flavio Caroli, Vera Agosti, Italo Tomassoni and Alessandra Tiddia, critical contributions by Eleonora Frattarolo and Giovanni Gazzaneo, poems by Giuseppe Conte, Maurizio Cucchi, Seamus Heaney, Guido Oldani, Gian Ruggero Manzoni, Alda Merini, Roberto Mussapi, Alban Nikolai, Davide Rondoni, Massimo Silvotti and personal notes by Omar Galliani.

As part of the exhibition, a Milano two in-depth conferences: the 12 September, at 21.00 pm, at the Planetarium, the meeting entitled Omar Galliani. Drawing as cosmogony. Nocturnes, galaxies and constellations in the master's poetics; the 19 September, at 18.00:XNUMX pm, at the Natural History Museum, the talk entitled Omar Galliani. The anatomy of drawing. Nature in the work of the master. More information on the program and how to participate will be published on www.palazzorealemilano.it.

Opening hours: from Tuesday to Sunday 12.00-19.30, Thursday 12.00-22.30, closed Monday; last entry 30 minutes before closing.

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