Leila Heller Gallery is pleased to announce “Emotional diagrams and other micrologies”, the first solo exhibition of Loris Cecchini with the gallery, on view from January 15 – February 21, 2015 at Leila Heller Gallery, located at 568 West 25th Street. A reception for the artist will take place Thursday, January 15, 2015 from 6PM-8PM. Continuing his inquiry into the evaluation of space in relation to nature, technology, and art, “Emotional diagrams and other micrologies” proposes an overview of the artist’s practice whereby materials are re-explored while reality gradually evanesces across the gallery’s space.

Throughout his exciting career, Cecchini has continuously introduced the concept of the organic element as a central element of his work, in part as an exploration of the idea of the object and its inherent materiality but also as a minimalist practice. Acting with the lens of a scientist, Cecchini closely examines his modules initially starting with basic 3D or watercolor studies moving forward toward the particularity of natural elements.

The exhibition will present a number of Cecchini’s module-based installations, a calculated chain of stainless steel elements originating from his preliminary inquiries again using organism, as a leitmotif in his work to address the intricate evolution of art in relation to sciences. In The Ineffable gardener and inherent transience (2013), Cecchini has joined together petals of his steel modules to form a semblance of climbing plant organically deriving in an array of bewildering trails contrasting the deliberate intention of the propagation.

Biological metaphor and motion represent core philosophies behind the artist’s investigation and fundamental basis in his projects. The exhibition will feature two of his Wallwave Vibration series or what the artist refers to as ‘extruding bodies’, a physical manifestation of a pulsation resembling a fluid’s whose balance has been disseminated to form a delicate electromagnetic wave. With these works, the context of the gallery is transformed and fragility is incorporated within the supporting structure as the artist simultaneously uses space as a subject and material, establishing at the same time new definitions of sculpture.

Cecchini’s work owes as much to his expertise of a broad range of media as to his indefatigable curiosity. In addition to his structural pieces, the artist will have on view new colorful paintings constructed by combining countless layers of synthetic felt and iron, a process that he amalgamates using both manual and scientific labor. The pattern-like “stiacciato” or middle- relief surface of the compositions somewhat evokes fictional embosses as the inherent materiality of objects is reinvented in a kind of phenomenon of stratification and crystallization.

Cecchini is fascinated by the synthesis between art and life. Incorporating elements from various interdisciplinary fields from chemistry to groundbreaking technologies, his work playfully investigates the limits of creation generating a continuous detection of exciting art outcomes whose definitions are ever changing.

About the artist

Born in Milan in 1969, Loris Cecchini lives and works in Berlin. One of the most prominent Italian artists on the international scene in the last decade, he has shown his work around the world, with solo shows at prestigious museums and galleries like the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Saint-Etienne Métropole, the PS1 in New York, the Shanghai Duolun MoMA, the Museo Casal Solleric in Palma di Maiorca, the Centro Gallego de Arte Contemporaneo in Santiago de Compostela, the Kunstverein in Heidelberg, the Fondazione Teseco in Pisa, Quarter in Florence, the Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci in Prato, and others. Cecchini has also participated in various international art events, including the 49th and 51th Venice Biennale, the 6th and 9th Shanghai Biennale, the 13th and the 15th Rome Quadriennale, the Taipei Biennial (Taiwan), the Valencia Biennial and the 12th International Sculpture Biennale of Carrara. He has contributed to many group shows, for instance at the Ludwig Museum of Cologne, Palazzo Fortuny in Venice and Macro Future in Rome, and has produced a number of permanent site-specific installations, in particular in Italy, at Villa Celle Pistoia) and in the courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, in 2012.