Lenz Press

“In general, my whole work is a movement from the inside to the outside and vice versa; past and present, personal and collective are fluctuating entities; the work becomes an intermediate place where a transformation of the tragic sense of the world, of its conflict and violence, is taking place.” (Alessandro Pessoli, from a conversation with Pierpaolo Campanini)

Alessandro Pessoli (Cervia, Italy, 1963) lives and works in Los Angeles. His practice is typically multimedia in nature, focusing on drawing, painting and sculpture, while also favoring ceramic. Often underscored by themes spanning politics, religion, history, culture, and identity, his research recalls the theme of the sacred and the religious, emerging both from the resumption of historical figures, classical art-historical iconography, and everyday images which intermingle in a reconstruction of reality that is dreamlike, painful, and sometimes grotesque, but never lacking instinctive emotion.

The publication Testa Cristiana is the outcome of the project of the same name specifically conceived by the artist for the spaces of the Cloisters of Sant’Eustorgio and the Carlo Maria Martini Diocesan Museum in Milan, where all these issues are traceable in existing works and new productions created for the exhibition. Offering an intimate path that conveys Pessoli’s idea of sacredness, the show is a site-specific dialogue with the architecture and the relics preserved in the building, reflecting his conception of the sacred as confronted with contemporary life, which demands us to coexist with pain and uncertainty.

The volume aims to articulate this approach through a rich selection of installation views and a dedicated section where the exhibited works are graphically treated as “icons.” It features a text by writer and curator Alexis Vaillant on Pessoli’s oeuvre, with a particular focus on his chimeric figurative vocabulary, and an essay by curator Eva Fabbris, investigating the sense of the sacred through the artist’s practice. In addition, a conversation between Alessandro Pessoli and the Italian artist Pierpaolo Campanini reflects on the possible degree of spirituality in their artistic research.