Is there an eruption or a meltdown? Shall I push or pull?
Wave crests rippling out into the open Sea. Melting heat. Tar, turpentine and oil swirl in a puddle, dust and sea spray merge in a windswept afternoon choreography.
Ruggero’s works demand nothing. Only if you have found yourself fighting against the elements on the cliffs of Kythira or experienced the midday sloth and serenity in the BACK BAY, or even just followed a foot path through a valley, will you begin to feel the source of inspiration of Ruggero’s work.
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Is there an eruption or a meltdown? Shall I push or pull?
Wave crests rippling out into the open Sea. Melting heat. Tar, turpentine and oil swirl in a puddle, dust and sea spray merge in a windswept afternoon choreography.
Ruggero’s works demand nothing. Only if you have found yourself fighting against the elements on the cliffs of Kythira or experienced the midday sloth and serenity in the BACK BAY, or even just followed a foot path through a valley, will you begin to feel the source of inspiration of Ruggero’s work.
Waves, endless waves. Symmetrical, each awaiting its destiny before transforming into an opposite force and setting out to sea again, only to return to the same rock, at an indefinite time in the future. ANTIMAMALO - endless motion.
The Rock Knows.
The memory - the imprint - the mark - the patience. The temperance of the rock. Erosion, corrosion, orange peel rust and choking dust. Elements in eruption, forces in decay, powers of rejuvenation, cyclical, spiral, and elliptical, they all converge in Ruggero’s work with a burst of color.
I am honored to host his exhibition.
Alexandros Charatzas
Zeidoros Gallery
Ruggero Vanni (b. 1958) is an Italian and American abstract painter. Born in Paris, he grew up in Rome, where he attended the Istituto d’Arte. In 1979 he received a scholarship to study painting at The Cooper Union School of Art in New York, where he has established himself up to present. His first solo show was at Il Ponte Gallery, Rome in 1986, and he has continued to exhibit nationally and internationally over the last forty years.
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Ruggero Vanni (b. 1958) is an Italian and American abstract painter. Born in Paris, he grew up in Rome, where he attended the Istituto d’Arte. In 1979 he received a scholarship to study painting at The Cooper Union School of Art in New York, where he has established himself up to present. His first solo show was at Il Ponte Gallery, Rome in 1986, and he has continued to exhibit nationally and internationally over the last forty years.
Vanni’s work has drawn inspiration from the tumultuous activity of Manhattan since his arrival in the late 70’s, in the wake of Abstract Expressionism. He found in that movement the perfect complement to his interest in late Renaissance Venetian painting.
In the summer, he nourishes his sensibility from the seascape around the Greek island of Kythira, where he has a studio. Observing these shifting forces, he tries to distinguish forms, orders, and patterns that will emerge in his work.
Public collections include: Pinacoteca of Aosta, Italy; Irving Cancer Center, Columbia University, NY;
Yale Eye Center, Yale University, New Haven, CT; Camba Housing Ventures, Brooklyn, NY.
One Person Exhibitions
2024 Color-Matters, Arco Gallery and
Anderson Contemporary, New York, NY
Antimamalo, Zeidoros Gallery, Kythira, Greece
2020 Arco Gallery, New York, NY
2014 Arco Gallery, New York, NY
2010 Village West Gallery, New York, NY
2009 Space Green, New York, NY (Cat.)
2007 Chiostro Boccarini, Amelia, Italy
1989 Galleria Il Ponte, Rome, Italy
For Art Sake Gallery, Claremont, CA
1987 Galleria Il Ponte, Forum, Zurich, Switzerland
1986 Galleria Il Ponte, Rome, Italy
1983 Galleria Quattrocento, New York, NY
Group Exhibitions
2019 Arco Gallery, 14C Art Fair, Jersey City, NJ
2017 The Four Seasons, Village West Gallery,
Jersey City, NJ
2016 Arco Gallery, Art on Paper, New York, NY
2014 Petits Formats and Works on Paper,
Arco Gallery, New York, NY
Arco Gallery, Aqua Art Fair, Miami, FL
Paper Reveries, Shirley Fiterman Art Center,
CUNY, New York, NY
2010 Play Me – I’m Yours, Sing For Hope,
New York, NY (Cat.)
1999 4th Annual Loft Pioneer Show, The Puffin Room,
New York, NY
1997 New York – New Generation curated by Barbara
Rose, Palazzo Penna, Perugia, Italy (Cat.)
1996 Kouros Gallery, New York, NY
1992 Grace Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
York College of Art, Jamaica, NY (Cat.)
Galleria Il Ponte, Chicago International Art Expo,
Chicago, IL
1991 Charles Cowles Gallery, New York, NY
Galleria Il Ponte, Chicago International Art Expo,
Chicago, IL
1990 Galleria Il Ponte, Chicago International Art Expo,
Chicago, IL
1989 Galleria Il Ponte, Chicago International Art Expo,
Chicago, IL
Under 35, Campo Boario, Rome, Italy
1988 Cromantica, Tour Fromage Art Center, Aosta,
Italy (Cat.)
Galleria Il Ponte, Chicago International Art Expo,
Chicago, IL
Pittura-Pittura, Galleria Il Ponte, Rome, Italy
Gallery’s Artists Summer Exhibition, Galleria
Il Ponte, Rome, Italy
1987 Galleria Il Ponte, Chicago International Art Expo,
Chicago, IL
Gallery’s Artists Summer Exhibition, Galleria
Il Ponte, Rome, Italy
1982 Houghton Gallery, Cooper Union, New York, NY
One island, one artwork: a matter of edges. Does Kythira unfold itself of its own accord, as a rocky eruption, expanding so rapidly that we can’t see it springing from nothingness, pushing back a provisionally tamed sea that sparkles with rage— or does a deliberate retraction of the flow leave the rock visible? The same is true of Ruggero Vanni’s works: it’s impossible to know whether they result from the required unfurling of a crumpled material whose folds fossilize the expansion, or whether the surrounding space spreads out around these edges to exist.
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One island, one artwork: a matter of edges. Does Kythira unfold itself of its own accord, as a rocky eruption, expanding so rapidly that we can’t see it springing from nothingness, pushing back a provisionally tamed sea that sparkles with rage— or does a deliberate retraction of the flow leave the rock visible? The same is true of Ruggero Vanni’s works: it’s impossible to know whether they result from the required unfurling of a crumpled material whose folds fossilize the expansion, or whether the surrounding space spreads out around these edges to exist. At the very least, there is a premeditated tension between opposing forces, giving these canvases and papers an emotional and intellectual eloquence out of all proportion to their size.
The artist, deeming abstract art far too figurative and figurative art far too abstract, seeks a difficult balance between the open horizon of the non-representational and the straitjacket of the figurative, just as he seeks to equalize impulsive projection through the discipline of craft.
For the question here is not: what is figured? but: how is it figured? Not because we have to assume that representation here exists, but because it’s the way in which it comes about. These works reject the easily identifiable contours that would encourage the lazy iconolatry of the eye and set in motion police mechanisms of recognition, but propose an even more radical imitation of reality: they arise as the island emerges. In this sense, Ruggero offers us concrete art, the very opposite of abstract art.
The painter makes his own material. Under his fingers, paper is born from fibers: dissolution, decantation, sedimentation, percolation, all chemical and geological magic is brought to produce a material that is the work and not its substitutive support.
In the end, this logic of folds and cracks reveals an unconventional naturalism, even an ardent physicalism tending towards the spiritual: the paradox being due only to the breaking of a cliché. It is impossible to tell from these folds whether they are cracks in the earth or crashing waves: the outpouring is captured at a moment close to its origin. The artist’s long association with Kythira undoubtedly plays an important role in this attempt to capture generic patterns or universal trepidations.
Ruggero Vanni’s compositions, flowing back from the margins where they first came to a head, are centered and balanced, with a marked north - but all the more deceptive for it. In the midst of this accomplished whole, it is impossible to focus the gaze on a point that would offer even a needle’s eye to allow for a narrative, a path. These landscapes are given all at once: to try to detail them is to enter a labyrinth where you quickly lose the object of your search more than yourself.
The role played here by color is very particular: it is neither a superficial camouflage nor a tint taken from mass, it is a liquid glaze spreading across the surface following the laws of gravity (and which the vertical hanging of the work questions), seeking out lower points, accumulating in the folds where, imprisoned, it seems to freeze.
The pigments reveal the paper and underline its irregularities; in exchange, the relief brings colors into play, giving them the purity of cloistered interiors or the virtuosity of suminagashi. Here and there one sees a deposit of pollen between the stones of a path, a cumulus nimbus reflected on water moving over pebbles, a patch of versicolored gasoline undulating along a worn mole. The black and golden counterpoints are echoes of obscured Myrtidiotissas, tarred to the point of indecipherability and covered in jewels, absorbing and reflecting light all at once, as do the black holes lurking in the milky ways here and elsewhere.
Rare/pure/intense colors, phosphorescences, brilliance - Ruggero’s work refuses to shy away from surface effects. The tiny flashes of glitter are no ingenious gimmick: they come straight from ancient technical treatises. But these micas ocelli are something else again: the rocks of Kythira, crushed and incorporated into the work. Without these chromatic arpeggios, the cardboard would be a mute score.
Whether on canvas or on paper, always the same effort of the artist: to unfold the world, to show what’s inside. Whether it is geodes revealing their crystals or organisms displaying their viscera, this externalization fortunately condemns us to appearances, since the inside never reveals itself, as in the impenetrable night, but simply transforms into another surface. Our conditioned gaze wrings itself out too easily towards the depths of transparency or meaning, making the god disappear into the idea. The opaque, shimmering roughness of these works forces us to be present— we so rarely are— and prompts us to meditate on the shimmer of what is visible, on the apparition of apparition, on absolute appearance.
Regis Lapasin