Lugano
Pier Paolo Calzolari is known for the formal originality of his multi-faceted practice (painting and sculpture, but also performances he looks on as “acts of passion”), which has often made use of such organic materials as tobacco leaves, fire and frost to create “work-installations” that challenge the limits of contemporary art.
The retrospective exhibition at the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco brings together works he produced between the late 1960s and 2014. Titled Casa ideale (Ideal Home) after a “text-manifesto” written in 1968, and spread across Villa Paloma’s three floors, the exhibition plays on the codes of interiors, that is to say the codes of the personal that echo the existentialism of the artist’s production.
The show is accompanied by a catalogue co-published by the NMNM and Humboldt Books, featuring exhibition views, an essay by Andea Viliani, an interview with the artist by Guillaume de Sardes, and texts by Valérie Da Costa, Didier Semin and Stéphane Vacquier.