Giorgio Griffa. A continuos becoming.
Camden Arts Centre, London, UK
26 January – 8 April 2018
We visited this art exhibition in March this year and got really inspired by the paintings presented by Giorgio Griffa (1936) at the Camden Art Centre. Griffa is an Italian abstract painter who lives and works in Turin and has been closely related to Arte Povera, which stands for ‘poor art’. This is a movement that appeared in Italy in the 1960s and with which artists sought to radically redefine painting by incorporating throwaway or ‘poor’ materials into their work.
Griffa believes in the ‘intelligence of painting’ and allows for every element of the process to influence and form his work, from the type of brush he uses to the nature of the canvas or the dilution of the pain.
Griffa’s approach is performative and time-base, as he assures that painting is “constant and never finished”.
His sources of inspiration include quantum energy, time-space mathematics, the golden ratio, and the memory of visual experience since time immemorial. The body of work presented at Camden Arts Centre spans his career from the 1960s to today and was curated by artist and curator Stephen Nelson.
I found this exhibition visually striking and very much aligned with my own taste. The use of bold, primary colours on unstretched raw canvas was heightened by the gallery’s white walls. As soon as I entered the space, I felt as though I were stepping into the artist’s personal universe. The simple shapes and materials he uses resonate deeply with me, as if he had discovered a set of universal symbols and generously shared them with the world.
Performing as The art berries, we added another layer to the exhibition, and I dare say that Griffa would approve of this addition — not only for its improvisational and time-based qualities, but also for the “constant and never finished” approach that lies at the heart of his own practice.
See us as The Art Blackberry and The Art Blueberry interacting with Griffa’s artworks.
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