Galleria Franco Noero is pleased to present Threshold into Deficit (the void after Fontana), the fifth solo show by Gabriel Kuri with a new series of works created for the occasion and shown in the spaces of Via Mottalciata.

A text has been specially written by the artist to accompany the exhibition, becoming the most appropriate introduction to it:

Threshold into Deficit (the void after Fontana) is an exhibition of new wall mounted works and floor-based sculptures. It is a project atypical of my practice as I do not openly quote nor homage other artists. In this case, I felt it was a risk very well worth taking.

The word “Deficit” in the title alludes to both debt in the language of exchange or trade (these ideas have been consistent in my work), and also my professional or poetic debt towards the oeuvre of Fontana.

The use of the word “after” in the title also has a double meaning. After as in reference to, and also alluding to the fact that whereas it is clear that in the arts we are living in a predominantly post ideological world, we are perhaps also living in a world less and less reliant on metaphysical notions, an era somewhat after metaphysics.

The idea of the void in the 21st century may have departed from that in the mid 20th century mind. Fontana himself said that the idea of the void in his times was already being replaced by a mathematical formula. Although Fontana's radical conception of space (that propelled around 1949) could be said to precede some of the leaps attempted in the period of conceptual art (of the late 60s and early 70s), Fontana never shied away from form, he always expressed his ambitious ideas with implacable confidence in form, material and gesture. This exhibition is also one that is rooted in form, material and gesture. Through these, I insist on the allusion to the in between positive and negative space, as well occupying interstitial volume.

In this exhibition I wonder whether the locus of poetics, that elsewhere aspired in the creation of an artwork, may in fact be an elsewhere which is mundane and concrete. The void on the other side of the threshold may also be a void that can be conceived of in terms that can actually be accounted for, like in the world of credit and debt, whose definition rests on the fact that there is symmetry on both sides of zero. That intangible entity on the other side of the concrete -that which can be visibly accounted for- is possibly no less visible and equally tangible.

The attempt to dialogue with Fontana in the concise terrain of prose and function may be most clearly seen in the use of supports which are not conventionally of the fine arts. These include commercially available wall mounted vitrines (normally employed for changing practical messages of public address), stainless steel plaques (more commonly found in technical equipment), or an actual crate that normally functions to transport art works. In addition to these there are two free standing sculptures made of concrete and plexiglass and one semi cubic volume covered with black weatherproofing material. Some of the particles populating these works include extinguished cigarette butts, coins, eggshells, switches and plugs.

Gabriel Kuri, July 2021