The title says it all: “San Pier Niceto, two days with Emilio Isgrò”, scheduled for tomorrow and the day after tomorrow in Piazza Diaz (start at 9 pm and 7 pm). Two years after the conferment of honorary citizenship, the conceptual artist, originally from Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto, returns to the country in the province of Messina, where his grandparents were born, as a sign of gratitude on his part and of renewed honor by the Tyrrhenian center. The highlight of the event organized by the Municipality will be the presentation of the latest book by Isgrò (who is also a writer, poet and playwright as well as a journalist), published by Solferino and entitled “I (not) gate. My misunderstood life ».
Tomorrow the documentary film “I Come Isgrò”, by Nunzio Gringeri (of Milazzo) and Riccardo Cinella, produced in 2014 by the Experimental Center of Cinematography – Sicily headquarters, will be screened tomorrow. Starting from Milan of the 60s-70s, the film tells the artistic evolution of the “cancellations”, a creative technique that manages to be a critical look at the world. The short video “The honorary citizenship of Emilio Isgrò” will follow, made two years ago by Francesco Romagnolo to celebrate that “historical” event culminating with the arrival of a conceptual work, which was the truck that contained only an ant: “The infinitely large and the infinite small together”, to put it with the artist. The evening will be concluded from the show “Radichi di Cori”, musical (and poetic) path by Alfio Patti, called the Aedo of Etna.
On Friday, the meeting in the square will be entirely dedicated to the presentation of the book, with a round table in which they will dialogue with Isgrò the historic of art Valentina Certain, the Superintendent to the cultural and environmental heritage of Messina Orazio Micali and the teacher and writer Antonella Nuccio. The evenings will open the greetings of the mayor Domenico Nastasi and the councilor for culture Giuseppe Ruggeri, as well as the regional deputy Pino Galluzzo.
“I (not) gate” was written by the artist together with the historic and criticism of art Chiara Gatti. Isgrò, born in 1937, narrates his artistic life (and not only), based on cancellation, a very particular creativity. For sixty years now, which seems to destroy and instead creates. Thanks to this “revolutionary” idea, Isgrò has become famous all over the world after years of critical perplexities, mainly due to the impossibility of classifying it and somehow “tame” it to the unwritten laws of the laps that matter, it being understood that when the “labeling” is missing it appears more difficult to understand and accept. Instead, in this case the artistic idea has been so strong as to overcome every obstacle. It always remains – as the subtitle warns – the misunderstanding, which seems to be there to create misunderstandings, to be comfortable to the denigrators, perplexed between conceptual and gestural, between painting yes and painting no. Until their surrender, in the face of a series of works, from the cancellation of the Constitution to those of public debt and racial laws and many others, which have consecrated Isgrò in art history.
All between provocation, communication and revolution, in the boxes where it was attempted to insert it and that he does not refuse, satisfied as it is to be Isgrò, always, however and everywhere.