Cesare Berlingeri - Untitled

During the 1950s and 1960s, the so-called poetics of the object began to spread in European and American art. Harking back to the readymade of Dadaist memory, a new wave of groups or movements emerged that repurposed everyday objects or discarded materials as works of art. The departure from traditional Dada lay in the strong influence of Abstract Expressionism, which led to the reconfiguration of objects with new languages ​​and new stimuli. In Cesare Berlingeri's artistic research, the central object is the canvas itself, which, however, is repeatedly folded by the artist, assuming a new configuration. The idea of ​​the folds was inspired by a childhood memory: a folded cloth amulet his mother wore around her neck.

In Cesare Berlingeri's research, the canvas as an object is the central focus, and this implies the coexistence of several highly interesting conceptual approaches. First and foremost, the very idea of ​​elevating the object to a work of art, typical of neo-Dada movements and our own Arte Povera, and consequently the concept of artistically recontextualizing the object through the artist's gesture, which in Berlingeri's case takes the form of repeated folding. Through this process, the work becomes something entirely new, a sort of hybrid between painting and sculpture. Indeed, it is a painted canvas, but, at the same time, also a form sculpted by the artist with a complete three-dimensional presence in space. Indeed, the canvas almost seems to contain and conceal something within, so Cesare Berlingeri's artistic production also possesses the hermetic and mysterious allure found, for example, in Christo's wrapped objects.

Cesare Berlingeri was born in 1948 in Cittanova. He began painting at a very young age. In 1968, he undertook a series of trips to Europe, where he explored contemporary culture. In Rome, in the 1970s, he worked for the theater and television as a set and costume designer. In 1975, his first solo exhibition was held in Florence at the AxA gallery, and in 1978, his first solo exhibition in Rome at the Soligo gallery. In 1986, he was invited to the 11th Quadriennale. His folded paintings were presented to the public in 1990, after his meeting with T. Trini, in the solo exhibition Opere recenti. During these years, his new work was exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions. The La Polena gallery in Genoa dedicated a solo exhibition to him, Viaggi. For the Mudima Foundation, he created a large wall installation titled Piegare la notte (1994), and in 1999, in addition to the Piegature, some small paintings on lead were presented. Also at the Mudima Foundation are some large canvases marked with charcoal in which “figurative elements, almost human signs, shadows of presences, cycles that converse” emerge, in the words of T. Trini, who edited an important monograph on them published by Skira in 2003.

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