Narrative Works

P420 presents the historic works of Bill Beckley from America, Peter Hutchinson from England and Franco Vaccari from Italy in the exhibition Narrative works. After the exhibition Dadamaino – Manzoni: the history of degree zero, the Gruppo T exhibition and the most recent retrospective on Antonio Scaccabarozzi the gallery continues its investigation, rediscovering the work of three artists who in the early Seventies were the stars of that artistic avantgarde that would soon go by the name of Narrative Art, in which the medium of photography, often accompanied by texts, became the protagonist of narration.

The aim of this exhibition is to represent the precise historic moment that photography assumed a new role in artistic use. It was used by these artists ever since the first experiences of Conceptual Art as a means to describe an event, as a medium to represent the action or happening that the artist frames as the real subject of the piece. Subsequently photography, sometimes accompanied by the use of texts, became able to narrate a story, often of normal daily life, independent of the fact that it really took place or that it may have a content that if not evocative, clearly renounces the search for logical paradoxes or linguistic non-sense. As Angela Madesani explains in the exhibition catalogue, “They are artworks in which images and written parts have the same value in the economy of the piece. Each of the two languages succeeds in maintaining its autonomy with respect to the other. We find ourselves before narrations-non-narrations in which we capture the specularity of the languages within the piece. Photography is only a trace of the real, it has nothing virtuous about it.”

The exhibition, which does not aim to present a group or a movement, develops with the works of artists that interpreted this change from the very beginning. Look then at the works song for a Chin-up (1971-72) by Bill Beckley, Composition with composites (1970) by Peter Hutchinson and Esposizione in tempo reale n.1 - Maschere (1969) by Franco Vaccari, which narrate and docment a precise action desired by the artist, while – to mention just a few - De Kooning’s stove (1974) by Bill Beckley, Alphabet Series (1974) by Peter Hutchinson and Viaggio sul Reno (1974) by Franco Vaccari take on the form of pure narrative. The opening of the exhibition will be held with the three artists in attendance. The catalogue, edited by Alessandro Pasotti and Fabrizio Padovani, with an introductory critical text by Angela Madesani and unpublished texts by Bill Beckley, Peter Hutchinson and Franco Vaccari, is available in the gallery.