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I Reviews I Exhibitions I

a much needed large-scale confiontation in *ris country wi*rhis work. Two studies among *rose lent by the artist are relatedto La Casa ldeab, ry68. An indexical work from early in hiscareer, it conveyed through a number of distinct set pieces anidea of a domestic environment in which everyday materials are

transfigured, as if in a troubled dream, by a web of associations

into multivalent objects of culture. Components drawn in outlineon sheets of paper texh.rred with salt and framed in lead inUntitled (projecr for My bed as it should be), ry68, are found as

actual objects in *re work of*rat title from the same year, suchas the line of enigmatic text and the moss-covered stick curvedinto a sensual suggestion ofa body. Details alluding to people inother works combine organic and technical forms - spectacles

offer vision through red petals for lenses, a model train shuttlingback and forth suggests the passage of time and distance, andbuttons imply clothing and, by being circular, infinity. Frost-whitepaper scorched by a lighted candle recalls the sting of ice burnand, elsewhere, the name Anne curves round crossed diagonals.

This exhibition coincides with presentations of two moreproponents of Italy's vibrant postwar Avant Garde, a scene thatremains litde studied in the UK. Mimmo Rotella's work prefiguredmany Pop Art tropes after he began to strip film posters fromRome's walls in 1953 and realrange the layered accretions intofissured visual fields offragmented printed colour. A process ofdeconstruction ensued, distinct from the strategies followed byWolf Vostell, Raymond Hains and the afichistes in Paris, whichconverted the results glued to canvas, wood and, occasionally,

over pitch or metal into abstract evocations ofthe material andsocial flux ofthe city.

Previous Rotella exhibitions in London, most notably at Ben

Brown Fine Art n zoo7, have concentrated on these lacerated

collages in which figuration resurfaced in the late r95os and thephoto-based reporfages canvases *rat followed. The value ofRobilant+ Voena's extensive show lies in its qualiq, and range. By extendingbeyond the mid r96os, the show portrays Rotella's pursuit ofyoking artistic practice io contemporary reality by integrating theiconography of mass media content through frequent technicalvariations that were influential for a generation ofltalian arlists.

In the 'Arqpo' series, 1966-, for instance, Rotella croppedsuperimposed images in printers' rerycled colour runs intoimpromptu compositions. Reviving his 'reportage' series inSeized, ry79, he reproduced a singie news photograph of a rifleand gun sight on canvas to reflect in bleak black and white onItaly's bloody an.ni di piombo (or 'years oflead', in reference to thebullets used in the era) of ffiban tefforism. His so-called 'blanks',

r98o-8r, commented ironically on art-world trends: by papering a

single-colour sheet over advertising posters, he cancelled contentjust as Transvanguardia was celebrating it in painting. By thelate r98os, urban texhrre was derived equally from street formsof gralfiti and its artistic di{fusion by painters iike fean-MichelBasquiat. Rotella used ddcollage as a support for painting which,when glued to the zinc panels modelled on ubiquitous metalstreet hoardings, seemed emblematic of Italian public life.

As a prominent collaborator wtilt Azimut(h), *re short-livedMilan publication and gallery initiated by Enrico Castellani andPiero Manzoni in ry59, Agostino Bonalumi was instrumentalin bringing about a watershed for Italy's progressive artistswhen conceptual research into non-allusive three-dimensionalabstraction supplanted informal painting as their primaryfocus. Bonalumi's origins were in painting but he trained as atechnical draughtsman and *rese disciplines seemed to mergein the exquisitely engineered'extoversions', 1959-, monochromecanvases coated in single bold tones ofvinyl tempera. A systematicsubstructure of geometric, straight-edged or curved lorms likefolds, blisters or models of modemist cities *ren pushed thephysical dimensions of the surface with orchestrated rhythmsinto protuberances in high relief. By emphasising a painting'sdynamic physicality in terms of tensions between material,volume and space articulated by colour and light, Bonalumiwas pursuing an idea of pure form. His practice was as mucha theoretical as practical exploration ofthe space in which art is

experienced, and his long career (he died in zor3) exemplifiedthe role of an artist in contemporary society as overcoming thealienation ofdoing and thinking.

A barrier to experiencing ihese ideas is ihe sheer visual elegance

of*re work. The eariiest wall-based pich.rre-oblect in the exhibition

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