The text you are about to read does not aim at giving an explanation or presentation to the two beautiful works presented by Diego Perrone at MASSIMODECARLO Pièce Unique. Quite the opposite, it tries to create more questions, open conversations, and even fuel debates, about Perrone’s unique and mysterious creations. In doing so, the following text introduces three figures whose appearance in this text is meant to feed the readers’ imagination and encourage a deeper dive into Perrone’s work without trying to rely on the usual dynamics caused by the equation explanation + understanding = knowledge. The idea here is to take a different path.

The first figure is animal.² Although animals have appeared in Perrone’s works – most famously in an early self-portrait,³ or in titles (Wolves⁴) – such a mention does not relate to subject-matter but rather to an attitude. When you experience his works, mostly related to three-dimensionality – here the word sculpture might turn out misleading –, you feel that the logic and beauty behind them do not really belong to us. Personally, when I look at Perrone’s work I find myself feeling the way I feel when I see a bird’s nest hidden on the top of a tree; a beehive built within a thin hidden space; a beaver’s lodge emerging from the water’s surface. I see beauty, I see a creative order, but most importantly I see a kind of energy I cannot decode with what I know, a kind of “unknown energy” that has been channelled for purposes – the casting of a bell,⁵ the molding of an ear – I do not know nor I wish to. In other words, his works require an instinctive kind of appreciation. They ask you to wonder and yes, we can say, they are wonderful.

The second figure is that of the alien.⁶ When you experience the work of Diego Perrone you feel a sense of alterity, you stand in front of an object that, albeit familiar, is charged by a sense of otherness that is hard to explain with what we were told, both in the field of art and outside the field of art. Probably one of the most iconic examples to trace this quality in his work is his video animation Totò Nudo⁷ in which one of the most recognizable figures of Italian popular culture – the Italian comedian and actor Totò – appears under a new light, perhaps the light reflected by a faraway planet. The snowy landscape, the act of getting naked, transforms what used to be so much part of a certain culture, of a certain era, into something else – “the other.” Although this work deviates from the three-dimensional experience we usually have upon encountering his work, it perfectly embodies his desire to present new forms of beauty that are unsettling and yet so attractive.

The third one is nature. While speaking to the artist about the fabrication of the two works to be presented at MASSIMODECARLO Pièce Unique, I realized how “the nature of his condition” influences his practice. Right now, Diego Perrone divides his time between the place he comes from – the countryside near Asti in Italy where he is renovating a place with as little help as possible; Bolzano, near the mountains, where his glass works are produced, following an advanced glass technique driven by chance; and Naples, near the sea, near a volcano, where, being without a studio, he started to photograph – the camera becoming a portable studio – the compositions of glasses and light featured in the work presented at MASSIMODECARLO Pièce Unique, which has a glass frame, part of a larger photographic series. As you can understand here “nature,” just like the other two figures, must be taken in its most open and imaginative way. In this case, nature serves to define a geographical denomination – land, mountain, sea, volcano – and becomes a synonym for “attitude,” a word that was used early on in this text.

To conclude, or rather to let the imagination take the lead, this text is an ode to the wonderful, animalistic and alien nature of Diego Perrone’s art; a homage to its unique and undefinable practice; a testament to the instinctual alterity of his creations.

- Nicola Trezzi is Director and Curator at CCA Tel Aviv-Yafo.

Notes:

1. Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (2005: Oxford University Press), p. 245.

2. Early 14c., “any sentient living creature” (including humans), from Latin animale “living being, being which breathes,” noun use of neuter of animalis (adj.) “animate, living; of the air,” from anima “breath, soul; a current of air” (from PIE root *ane- “to breathe”).

3. Senza titolo [untitled] (1994) is a photograph featuring the artist holding a chicken on his head.

4. Lupi (Wolves) (2007) is a trio of works consisting of silk-screen print on heat-formed Forex, steel, Biro, and Plasticine, 216 × 122 × 513 cm each. If sculpture could be used – although not recommended – to define most of Perrone’s work, these works could be categorized as reliefs.

5. La fusione della campana (The casting of a bell) (2007) is one of the artist’s most iconic works, consisting of a mix of epoxy resin, quartz powder, metal, and it measures 205.74 × 134.62 × 233.68 cm.

6. Alien /ā′lē-ən, āl′yən/; adjective: (1) Owing political allegiance to another country or government; foreign. “alien residents.” (2) Belonging to, characteristic of, or constituting another and very different place, society, or person; strange. synonym: foreign. (3) Dissimilar, inconsistent, or opposed, as in nature. “emotions alien to her temperament.” The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

7. Presented on the occasion of his 2005 solo exhibition “Totò nudo e la fusione della campana” at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, Totò nudo (2004-5) is a digital animation in which Totò, entirely created in 3D, undress and remains completely naked.