Paolo Canevari: Decalogo is presented in a specially designed Drawing Room located within the Main Gallery from April 22–June 24, 2011. This recent body of work by Paolo Canevari (b. 1963) was originally commissioned and exhibited by the Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica (ING) in Rome in October 2008. Comprised of ten large-scale etched plates, this presentation extends the thesis of the concurrent exhibition, Drawing and its Double: Selections from the Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica, by displaying plates without their resultant prints. Decalogo, the Italian shorthand for the Ten Commandments and perhaps the most well-known social contract or “rules to live by,” continues Canevari’s investigation into how dynamic imagery can reveal political and social crises. The plates reverberate on both technical and emotional levels, and lay bare the artist’s acute and perceptive understanding of our times.
Image: Paolo Canevari, Hanging Around, from the Decalogo series, 2008. Etched copper and dry-point, nickel-plated, 55 ✕ 35 ✕ 3/4 inches (set of ten). Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Christian Stein, Milan.
Co-curated by ING curator, Antonella Renzitti and Brett Littman, Executive Director of The Drawing Center