Hidden in Plain Sight

with a text by Davide Ferri

Hidden in Plain Sight is a hypothetical dialogue between two artists – Franco Guerzoni (Modena, 1948) whose long-standing collaboration with G7 began in 1973, and Lorenzo Modica (Rome, 1988) who is exhibiting his works in the gallery for the first time. The dialogue shows some of the features common to their poetics: a shared perception of the image, an image which enters in the material creases of the work of art, visible only through fragments and small clues; an image which is never fully unfolded, but reveals its power only after a long process of preparation and construction of its support, of the painting’s material life.
Modica, for instance, often uses cloths and fabrics whose patterns invite him to freely place dabs of color and painted backgrounds, but also fragments of printed images or photographs. This composition creates a sort of abstract landscape where signs and traces are placed in a syncopated and intermittent way.  They appear as hypotheses of shapes and objects recalling real life.
Guerzoni, on the other hand, creates a long-layered work which gives the artwork an important and material thickness. Inside this thickness, ideally, the images either are hidden or revealed as findings resulting from the act of digging (in the support) done by the artist a posteriori. It is a process of subtraction and of new additions of color and materials.
Both artists extend the boundaries of their pictorial processes by encompassing different techniques and materials and then mixing them together. Modica uses collage and paper – often monotype – to create multiple images that mutually recall each other. In Guerzoni’s work, we see the ripped fresco but also glass, chalk, photographic fragments and crumpled paper; these compress or unfold to reveal new images.
The exhibition has no chronological boundaries: in Hidden in Plain Sight, we see works by Guerzoni that belong to the Spie series from the early eighties, years in which the artist went beyond his earlier research on photography from the seventies, and when he dove into painting. Therefore these are works of transition, in which Guerzoni deepens his reflection on a work’s support, on material background intended as a passage of shape: the image, in these artworks, represents small faces or fragments (pieces of photographs and drawings) hidden and housed by the materiality of the work. On display are also Guerzoni’s most recent works, poised between painting and sculpture.
In a 2021 painting by Modica (La chacha) the artist’s intervention stems from the support (fabric/tablecloth), encompasses collage and finally takes on the form of signs which seem hypotheses of fragile and temporary shapes. Besides this artwork, the exhibition includes an installation of works on paper and drawings, designed by the artist specifically for the space of Galleria G7. The installation develops freely and is partially visible on the wall surface: it produces a dialogue and a process of action and reaction between paper collages created at different times, paintings, and simple visual notes or scribbles. The presence of such elements is either softened or enhanced by the viewers’ movements around the artwork.
The exhibition is part of a wider project focused on the inter-generational artists’ dialogue, launched by the Gallery in 2019 with the double exhibition of Jacopo Mazzonelli and Giulio Paolini.