M A R C O C O R D E R O
M A Y I C O M E I N ?
S O L O S H O W
Marco Cordero in his studio, Cuneo, Italy. 2022
Marco Cordero - in esergo I, 20221 - 45x39x6,5 cm Marble, book
If, in the artist’s poetics, the paper support becomes a sculptural material, in order to highlight the traces of human action and the sedimentation of social and anthropological interpretations that ap- propriate things to transform them into reality, the cultural content inscribed in the books becomes a general allusion to a symbolic universe capable of holding together form and becoming, idea and matter, flow and structure.
In the spaces of the Gallery, conceived as Géraldine Banier’s private home, we see an exhibition designed to privilege the intimate and relational dimension, through a selection of works set up with the intention of making them become a sediment of biography and spiritual, familial, social and political autobiography of the author, collector and user. The individual works, in different forms and materials, are integrated into a narrative capable of exalting both specific individual histories and the reference to a common human dimension made of family, friendship and emo- tional relationships, which are sedimented in works that are traces of lives lived, hopes, emotions, knowledge and possible horizons.
Furthermore, the idea of placing artworks in a domestic space strongly alludes to the dimension of collecting oneself, others and exemplary objects that, because of their aesthetic, political, artis- tic, historical or simply memorial quality, deserve to be collected and preserved, in the awareness that collecting a work of art always amounts to collecting parts of oneself in relation to parts of the world. In this case, the works of art that can be part of a collection carry on them the traces
of a universe of values and culture: the traces of knowledge that were inscribed and sedimented in them before they became sculpture material, when they were still, so to speak, only supports of knowledge and shared culture, that is to say books. These books, as we know, have been for centuries the privileged supports of man’s mind.
Ph.D. Roberto Mastroianni
UNESCO Chair Direction Committee Member-
Turin University C.I.R.Ce Independent Researcher- Turin University, Italy.
President Museo Diffuso della Resistenza, della Deportazione,
della Guerra, dei Diritti e della Libertà, Turin, Italy:
Professor of Methodologies and Techniques of Contemporary Arts,
Albertina Academy of Fine Arts, Turin, Italy .
«TORINO CREATIVA» City of Turin Department
Scientific and Artistic Advisor for Graffiti-Writing,
Street Art, Urban Art, Urban Design and Youth Creativity.
«Fondazione CONTRADA TORINO- Onlus», Artistic and
Scientific Curator or Graffiti-Writing, Street Art, Urban Art, Urban Design and Youth
Creativity, Turin, Italy.
Marco Cordero - veduta II, 2022 - 68x58x10 cm Frame, book, copper, oxyde
History, culture, spirit and matter become the elements of an iconic narrative that, from the sculptural intervention on the book and its textuality, articulates a double reminiscence: material and spi- ritual. The material of the book becomes thus a sculptural material, carrying with it the memory of the gesture of the human hand, in a lapse of time going from the rupestral paintings to the writing and to the contemporary sculpture, and triggering at the same time the memory of this universal novel that is the history of the spirit and of the human culture, which found in the book its privileged support and in the writing the main instrument and facility of its expression.
The intervention on the paper and on the text that it carries in superimposition, gives life to enigmatic and narrative forms and figurations that transform the object into a metaphysical device capable of making the material a door of access to our cultural, social and individual memory. The book broken, torn, lacerated, dug in the act of creation, becomes thus an aesthetic, historical and cultural object to take the totemic form of the emblem of the culture and the humanity, assuming
a magic, cultual and divinatory value. The writing and the literary, philosophical and fictional references are carried away by the sculptural gesture and the words that remain legible give life to dreamlike and imaginative landscapes, to mythological and abstract forms that activate the user’s deep consciousness.
In this dialectic between the materiality of cultural heritage and its conceptual projection, Cordero opens up a space in which it is possible to shape an existential hermeneutic that allows for a creative interpretation of the possibilities inscribed in our cultural and spiritual history. We are thus confronted with a game of unveiling and concealing the knowledge and forms of life sedimented in our cultural imagination, which are accessible through an archaeology of knowledge, which is at the same time an archaeology of the human and the material.
From this point of view, the book becomes the emblem of a collective heritage able to enclose in it, in a symbolic way, references to the spiritual and historical dimension, and at the same time, a material support, a substrate of sense and meaning that is re-functionalized and resemantized, giving it a new existence.
Text de Roberto Mastroianni.
«May I come in ?» by Marco Cordero
For many years Cordero has been exploring the forms and boundaries of human presence in the world through a lateral view that unites sculpture, material research and the symbolic dimension in an innovative and original approach that uses knowledge and culture as expressive material and content of artistic devices. From this point of view, the book, understood as a material sup- port, symbol of knowledge and of the human spirit, becomes an object of intervention on which the traces of poetic and sculptural action are sedimented, capable of giving a sense, a function, a meaning and a form to the pre-existing, in order to investigate the essential structure of humanity.
The books are in fact assembled, burned, excavated and sculpted by the artist’s hand to give form to sculpture-installations that become stratified semiotic devices, capable of iconically representing human presence in the world, in relation to space and time, becoming at the same time an allusion to that encyclopedic and imaginary content that tends to coincide with human cultures themselves. Marco’s works thus become semiotic and anthropological devices capable of linking the genealogi- cal dimension of culture and writing to that of matter: the library, the book, textuality and scripturality become archetypal elements and traces of a specifically anthropological dimension that casts its shadow over reality and history.
Marco Cordero - per un soffio (vaso), 2022 - 40x30x23 cm Steel, books, oxyde
View of Marco Cordero's solo show "May I come in ?"
March 25th - May 29th 2022
54, RUE JACOB
75006 - PARIS
