The Trialogo exhibition, curated by Gianluca Marziani, it includes works by Matteo Basilé, an internationally renowned photographer known for his dreamlike and surreal images on the border between photography, painting, cinema, sculpture, and architecture; Danilo Bucchi, who refers to the tradition of European abstraction with the use of technological techniques and supports; and Paolo Grassino, who creates sculptures of great impact that generate in the observer a profound reflection on the world we have created and in which we live. The artists were all active in the Nineties, when digital technology in some way revolutionized the lives of all of us and also the artistic one. It was a very important period for understanding today's culture and art, so on her birthday, I met Rosa Basile in the spaces of Basile Contemporary in Rome, a few steps from Piazza Navona, and I tried to learn more about the artists and the theme of the exhibition with her.
Can you tell me how the idea for this exhibition was born?
The exhibition inaugurated under the curatorship of Gianluca Marziani is based on the idea of uniting these three contemporary mid-career artists together. It started from an intuition of mine because I found similarities between them, simply in the colors but also, even stronger, in the work. In my opinion, all three are very strong in their artistic statements. Paolo Grassino is a sculptor, Matteo Basilé is a photographer, and Danilo Bucchi starts from drawing to get to painting and, at a certain point, to sculpture. The exhibition was orchestrated by Marziani, who immediately found that when I exposed this project to him, he too saw a triad that worked very well, and the result we had from the public confirmed this. Many appreciated its elegance and sobriety.
This is a "constellation" wall where there are all three artists, and here the right and the left could even be confused. Paolo Grassino and Danilo Bucchi are different, but they have an assonance, something that unites them, like, for example, Bucchi's circle, which takes up Grassino's sculpture. There are two heads of Paolo on display; one is placed high up, so it has a surprise effect that you only notice when you look up. That is pure cement and is flanked by Basilé's work, which represents a marble quarry; therefore, the marble before being worked. Another particular connection is that between nature and the human being; we find it in Basilé but also in Grassino, who both have this way of making the human being emerge from nature or even nature from the human being, as it does in some photos of Basilé. All this gave us the music; it seemed like a catchy melody because these three artists who exploded in the 90s are more or less the same age, so this music seemed to work, and we leave the rest up to whoever comes to visit to decide this exhibition.
Changing the subject, the experience of this gallery was born during the epidemic, right?
The gallery in this specific space opened two and a half years ago, so the gallery is young, but as the founder of the gallery, I have a much more consolidated path behind me. I have had experience in the field for more than twenty years, both in the historicized and contemporary fields. At a certain point in my life, I opened this office and declared that the gallery wants to follow living contemporary artists with an important curriculum but winks at the historicized if there was the possibility or the will to create a dialogue because I have always declared that, in my opinion, there has never been a breaking point in the sense that art is a continuous thread; times change, forms change, something rises, something falls, but in reality everything is connected by a thread. So when there is the possibility that the historicized can speak with the contemporary, it can act as a mirror for the young artist. That is, the young artist sees themselves both in that medium and in that past, for which it is all a thread. If we want to find an imprint of the gallery, this is the promotion and valorization of mid-career artists without privileging a particular artistic practice, as you can also see in the current exhibition.
From what you tell me, I am reminded of a work by Maurizio Nannucci who welcomed visitors to an Egyptian museum in Germany (I don't remember the name) and who said all art has always been contemporary.
I sign this statement. We do nothing but talk about the time ahead of us; we talk about what happens outside in an empty room. Each one, with its own style, its own practice, and its own sensitivity, tells the story. The gallery owner tells the story according to his sensitivity and point of view. Either way, it tells the story. In this gallery, the artist's story and his voice are always welcome, since no one is able to express himself more than him. It is obvious that it is the work that, first of all, speaks with the voice of the artist, with an immediate language that is not that of the curator or the gallery owner.