Night Owl

Pizzi Cannella

May 21st - July 31st, 2022
Night Owl | Pizzi Cannella
Mazzoli Gallery / via Nazario Sauro 62, Modena

Pizzi Cannella was born in 1955 in Rocca di Papa (RM).
In 1975 he enrolled in Alberto Ziveri's painting course at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and at the same time he started attending La Sapienza as a philosophy major. He held his first solo exhibition in 1978, at La Stanza Gallery in Rome. In 1982 he established his studio in the ex Pastificio Cerere, in the San Lorenzo district, giving birth, together with Bruno Ceccobelli, Gianni Dessì, Giuseppe Gallo, Nunzio and Marco Tirelli, to the Scuola di San Lorenzo.
Of the same year is his first solo show at Fabio Sargentini's L'Attico Gallery in Rome, followed in the same season (1984-1985) by solo shows in New York (Annina Nosei Gallery), one in Berlin (Folker Skulima Galerie) and, in the following year, one at the Triebold Gallery in Basel.
He also held, over the years, several solo exhibitions in private Galleries in Italy and abroad: Galleria Cannaviello in Milan, Galleria Vidal-Saint Phalle in Paris, Galleria Bagnai in Siena and Florence, Galleria Di Meo in Paris, Otto Gallery in Bologna, Galleria Volume in Rome, Galleria Lo Scudo in Verona, Bibo's Place Gallery in Todi and then in Rome, Fondazione Pastificio Cerere and Galleria Mucciaccia in Rome, Partners & Mucciaccia Gallery in Singapore and London, Mekane in Rome.
Over the years museums and public spaces have dedicated solo exhibitions to him: Porte d’Oriente, a traveling exhibition in museum venues in former Yugoslavia (1989); Diari di guerra at the Gibellina Civic Museum (1991); Pizzi Cannella at Santa Maria della Scala in Siena (1997); Carte 1980-2001 at the Archaeological Museum of Aosta (2001); Polittici at Castello Colonna-Centro Internazionale d'Arte Contemporanea in Genazzano (2003); Le Mappe del Mondo at Teatro India in Rome (2004); Pizzi Cannella, sept ou huit chambres at l'Hotel des Arts in Toulon (2004); Cattedrale at MACRO Testaccio in Rome (2006-2007); Chinatown. Invito al viaggio, a traveling exhibition held at the Pagliere of the Palazzo Pitti Complex in Florence (2010), in 2011 at the Mudima Foundation in Milan and the following year at the Museum of Modern Art in Saint-Étienne; Bon à tirer at the Gallery of Modern Art in Udine (2011); Pizzi Cannella-Ceramiche at the International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza (2013); Pizzi Cannella, La fontana ferma. Fusioni in bronzo 1987-2013 in the Monumental Complex, Bourbon Prison in Avellino (2015); Pizzi Cannella at the Estorick Collection of Modern Art in London (2015); Pizzi Cannella-La Habana at the Josè Martì National Library in Havana (2015); Piero da Todi at the Hall of Stones, Palazzi Comunali in Todi (2016); Salon de Musique and other paintings in the Winter Palace, Hermitage, St. Petersburg (2017); Almanacco Napoli in the Palatine Chapel of the Maschio Angioino in Naples (2019), Cattedrale, Solstizio d’inverno, Classense Library, Mosaic Room, Ravenna.
His works are on permanent display in important public and private collections, including: Palazzo Reale in Milan, Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Turin, Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Bologna, Mumok Museum in Vienna, Hotel des Arts in Toulon, Museum of Contemporary Art in Beijing, MACRO in Rome, San Giorgio in Poggiale in Bologna, Biedermann Motech in Villingen-Schwenningen, at the Museum of Modern Art in Saint Etienne and at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.

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PRESS RELEASE

Mazzoli will be pleased to present Night Owl, Pizzi Cannella's first solo exhibition in Modena. The exhibition will feature 29 works, created by the artist between 2014 and 2022 that depict the main subjects of the Maestro's poetics: cathedrals, maps, views, Salon de musique chandeliers, jewelry and dresses. The exhibition is accompanied by the publication of a catalog with an essay by Richard Milazzo: The Exquisite Inexactitudes of the Soul.
In the essay, Richard Milazzo gives us an interesting perspective about the works in the exhibition: “So, what are we to make of all these and vistas. With all these great domes in the distance and arches leaping endlessly into the sky. Is Piero locating us in the mythical domes and arches be derived from just about anywhere domes and arches exist in the world? Are they, in fact, purely imaginary? And what is all this liquidity, all these washes in the pictures; are they referencing the Tiber River or the fluid way in which we remember things and forget them just as easily? [...] Where exactly might we locate the artist, the man who can neither sleep at night nor stay awake during the day, prone as he to sleepwalking in his studio from picture to picture at night and daydreaming his way from vision to vision when he is supposed to be conscious? [...] Are we actually looking at cities when we are looking at the cities and vistas piled on top of cities and vistas in Piero’s paintings or are these imaginary worlds floating in a world freed of the “nightmare of history” (James Joyce). Stephen Dedalus, in Ulysses: “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” Milazzo also reflects upon the artist himself: “Night owl, poet, a decadent documenter of the soul’s most inconspicuous (and, of course, conspicuous) vices; an ancient voyager lost at sea who finally found his way back to the shores of Rocca di Papa, where he was born, over and over again (for that is what an artist or a poet does every time he hopefully makes up his mind not to concentrate too hard on what he is supposed to do), just a few imaginary steps from the Mediterranean!”
Regarding his exhibition the artist has a clear opinion: “In a way, this exhibition documents my years as a night owl, spent in my studio, and in God knows how many other rooms, in hotels and spaces I can no longer remember, dreaming the stars into oblivion or at least into the morning hours, traversing unknown spaces, traveling to places, real and imaginary, unknown to me, engaging friends and strangers, never being quite sure which were which, compiling treasures and things of very little value except to me. I could never tell the difference, did not want to know the difference, between a world of riches and a soul seemingly impoverished but, in fact, engorged, by an indifference towards those things. [...] I have a story to tell. I always have stories to tell. I am a storyteller. My paintings tell all stories, especially the stories of the night.”