“I see it as an invitation by the space to create new work; as if the architectural space generates the work as a principle.”

Axel Vervoordt Gallery is pleased to present the exhibition Clair/Obscur by Belgian artist Renato Nicolodi (°Anderlecht, 1980), featuring new works that exist in response to the dialogue that space provides as a framework, in this case modern, minimalist white cube architecture.

The title of the exhibition goes back to one of the canonical principles of Renaissance art, especially in painting – which in turn hints at Nicolodi's training as a painter – but also in sculpture and architecture, where contrasting factors create a marble or granite play of light and dark: full and empty spaces; volumes in front of and behind each other. Just as the Renaissance artists sought a symbiosis between the ideals of antiquity and those of nature, Nicolodi makes archetypal sculptures that seem to transcend different time zones to a certain universality. The white sculptures, made of concrete and acrylic resin, that Nicolodi will show during Clair/Obscur, as well as the paintings on canvas, therefore evoke memories of ancient Rome, Greece, or Mesopotamia, but also of new sources such as the scenographies of, say, Michelangelo Antonioni or Joel Coen. The typical central void, however, still leaves room for the viewer's reflections and contemplations.

Artists: Renato Nicolodi