Valerio Dehò

On the occasion of the exhibition at the G7 gallery

Vinicio Momoli has been working since the 1980s around the simplicity of shapes and materials. His aim is to find the right forms for a clarity of object representation that presents itself as an enigmatic presence. Within the stylistic features of minimalism he operates transformations that irreversibly alter the game of repetition and accumulation, but he tries to give body and color directly to the material. At the beginning, this was mainly represented by iron and wood. But in these works there were elements of sign, even on paper, which, integrated into the sculpture-paintings, created a counterpoint effect between the dryness of the materials and the elementary nature of the artistic intervention. Momoli often practiced drawing not only as a project for works, but with an autonomous value. In this sense, even then the attempt consisted of a synthesis between simplicity and complexity, between the individual trait of the design and the extended planning of the workshop. Ultimately this has always been his bond with painting.
The object work of the nineties that made him known abroad, especially in Spain and Austria, has its roots in minimalism, but does so with a chromatic sensitivity that is highlighted above all in those works in which monochromatism is redeemed by the individuality of the surfaces and the resulting tonal scales. Even industrial products have nuances that do not make them absolutely identical and serial.
Then the inclusion of synthetic materials such as rubber alongside rubber or steel led his research within a contrast between natural and artificial.

The same insertion as light bulbs or neon lights, it created an effect of diffusion of the work in the environment, almost an expansion of it.
His attention was brought towards a synthesis of painting, sculpture, interior design.
His "objects", such as wall installations, start from a concept of habitability, that is, from a visual matrix that conditions their finalization.
Momoli always wants to insert his works into a concept and reality of spatial location which can be both the gallery and the private home. The project of his works is placed within the usability of art in space.
Functionality becomes a physical and mental relationship with an enigmatically simple work of art. For this reason, complexity develops starting from an ease of approach that aims to synaesthetically involve multiple senses at the same time. The same apparent modularity is always presented with various openings and singularities that link it. The coldness of repetition is warmed by the materials or by the light which modifies the work by expanding it in space and irradiating it in colour. Rereading the entire corpus from the serial monochrome rubber elements repeated and made in different types of materials, to the wall works which, with the insertion of light bulbs or neon lights, create different interaction and color effects with their luminous temperature and the colored surfaces of rubber and rubber, we understand how a common purpose underlies the research of the Venetian artist. Among the latest works we note a development that continues a path aimed at the root of the hybrid forms between painting and architecture: even if it uses an industrial product such as plexiglass as a support, it inscribes a labyrinthine path that takes up the theme of the Roman grid . His attentive eye for architecture and human space has reconstituted through painting an architectural theme that also appears like a labyrinth: a structure that on the one hand protects and preserves, while on the other disconcerting like a tortuous conceptual path . It is always human space that interests him, an essential space, but not bare.

A space in which the reflection of the visual artist summarizes the history of forms by connecting them with current events, with a concept of contemporaneity to be experienced and investigated incessantly.

The work takes on its concrete presence which is amplified by an unadorned signifier. Yet Momoli tries precisely to finalize the work on this relationship between the spectator and the work which is silent and silent without the excess of an exclusively technological choice of materials, nor of the monochromatic closure that isolates the work of art from the context and makes it a monad not communicating with the outside, but choosing an intermediate path that leaves room for sensorial and visual involvement, as well as for purely mental reflection. This is probably the characteristic of his work, which places him in a rather unusual position in the Italian artistic panorama. The mystery and magic of the work reflect a position of respect for the role of the user and the pleasure of a gradual discovery and necessary habit of the relationship between the work itself and the "frame".
Naturally, all this can happen with a project in which the artist closely monitors the relational possibilities between art and architecture, just as he supervises the formal and chromatic rendering of the materials.

Valerio Dehò
On the occasion of the exhibition at the G7 gallery
Bologna, 2001