Mimmo Rotella: Blanks

The exhibition presents a selection of works produced by Mimmo Rotella in the beginning of the 1980s. If with his well-known décollages, or torn posters, the artist had discovered the infinite possibilities of the popular image, with the blanks he set out instead to explore the temporal and linguistic limits of this mode of communication. The street, the city were once again inspirational for the artist that, wondering around Milan, discovers that the posters were covered up by monochrome pieces of paper when the time for their display on the city walls was over: the image was cancelled out, as was the information contained in it.

With this procedure the chaos, disorder and superimposition put on show with the décollages were covered with a new skin, revealing the infinite possibilities of color, of re-creation, the power of order and the rational act. The majority of the blanks were created in the 1980s by sticking large monochrome – black, white and coloured – sheets of paper onto old and disused advertising hoardings. Right at the beginning of the decade Rotella had left Paris and moved for good to Milan. He had a new studio and began to forge new links with the city and its streets. The erasures were the starting-point for his subsequent research, for a return to the image through a different approach. The blanks were shown for the first time in Milan in 1980. Since then these works have been exhibited on very few occasions. So Cardi Gallery is trying to fill this gap and presenting to the public a little-known but extremely interesting aspect of Mimmo Rotella’s production. A catalogue, that is the first publication to be devoted entirely to the subject, accompanies the show and we believe it bodes well, and can be an excellent point of departure, for future studies of this series of works. The exhibition Mimmo Rotella, Blanks is part of a series of events linked to the tenth anniversary of the artist’s death in which other Milanese galleries and institutions are taking part, bearing witness to the strong relationship established between Rotella and the city in which he worked and made his home during the last decades of his life.

The expositions “Mimmo Rotella 2016” are realized in collaboration with the Mimmo Rotella Institute that was founded thanks to Inna and Aghnessa Rotella in 2012 with the aim to promote and protect nationally and internationally the knowledge of Mimmo Rotella and his art. The Mimmo Rotella Institute is directed by Antonella Soldaini with the scientific support of Veronica Locatelli. With this show Cardi Gallery confirms once again his interest for national and international historical artists.