Nicolò Quirico
Palaces of Words
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Nicolò Quirico Palaces of Words
Photographic prints on a collages of vintage books pages
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The town voice Streets, squares and buildings are common features of everyday life – fundamental elements that represent us, that show us for what we are. Nicolò Quirico constructs the essential constitutive parts of every metropolitan space as images devoid of self-referentiality, by capturing them through a gaze which grasps the vital flow that springs from them or is concealed within them. These fragments of cities come alive the moment in which they are apparently no longer contaminated by any human presence.They reveal the life that constitutes them: an intimate and arcane life, as it emerges from the present, steeped in history.The focus is on those concealed elements which encapsulate our existence as a whole – not just our private life but also our public one, our relations with others. Cities thus show themselves as a web of spatial and programmatic events, whose nature is that of a constant flux that is often unmeasurable, incomprehensible and unpredictable. In these images space is never taken for granted, but must be contemplated and acknowledged in order for it to speak to the eye, so as to disclose the hidden life of places that constitute points of departure and of arrival, venues for reflection on the city and our existence within it. What we have here is the charm of the perceptible side of cities grasped as an enchanted reality. Quirico reconstructs this reality by taking photographic snapshots that are enriched with – and connected to – its various aspects through cultural references to the places portrayed and the use of texts as a medium for the photographic prints. Following Quirico’s itineraries as enthralled spectators, we suddenly catch a glimpse of architectures that illustrate the many facets of the city as a sum of variants, recording unexpected movements and mysterious convergences.
Milano, Il Monolite | 160 x 105 x 4 cm
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Life and memories mingle through streams of words surfacing from behind the pictures: voices and sounds, stories and thoughts, which through collages made from the pages of vintage books emerge out of the photographic prints. Books and the material they are made of are a crucial part of Quirico’s work. They create a dense web of correspondences through their characters and layout, echoing the geometries of buildings – almost lending substance to their structure. These books are “disassembled” in order to be reassembled; through words, they are built like palaces, displaying iconic characters on sheets that always fold and overlap in a unique way, so as to create works that are never the same. The relation between inside and outside, between distance and proximity, and the synthesis of image, life and memory open up each frame to encompass ‘other places’, leading the viewer’s gaze towards things and the interior of things towards the viewer’s gaze, expanding it in all directions. Perception cuts through reality and extends so as to include what according to our sensory and intellectual habits is the only reality, through photographs that reconfigure the balance between concepts and images in a clear and detailed way. Quirico’s works blend real images with dreamt and constructed ones, ciphered images with numerous possible interpretations to be intuited and discovered, starting from the horizon of a city. They invite us to discover the most unpredictable sides of beauty by adopting unusual points of view, vantage points that are all the more valuable because they are vital, and whose charm lies in their capacity to convey a feeling of playful intellectual wealth. Alessandra Frosini
Busto Arsizio, Lo Storione | 100 x 140 x 4 cm
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Roma EUR, Il Trascinatore | work and detail | 125 x 220 x 4 cm 8
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Roma, Riunione di famiglia | 110 x 150 x 4 cm 10
Genova, L’ultimo dei fedeli | 160 x 220 x 4 cm 11
Milano, ScundĂšu ma minga tropp | 100 x 100 x 4 cm 12
Roma, La Nuvola eroica | 160 x 160 x 4 cm 13
Milano, Carola marmorea per giovane architettura | 160 x 120 x 4 cm 14
Napoli, Fossili di antiche energie | 160 x 140 x 4 cm 15
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Genova, Il contemplatore di meraviglie #1 | 140 x 150 x 4 cm 17
[…] Quirico has posed his shootings of single portions of the building as a starting point
and then has reassembled them in a collage which also refers, in the same way, to the graphic element. In Palaces of Words, this is the name of the whole project that he has worked on for some time, photographs are not printed on white paper as usual but on sheets of old books, so that fragments of sentences, sequences of short stories and opening words of novels overlap with architectural elements by creating not random references – though sometimes cryptic or mysterious – because the books were chosen by the author so to create a harmony with the subjects portrayed. The latest images that constitute a further stage of this investigation were all shot in London, thus posing the problem, well-known to designers and urban planners but also to the public, of the relationship between the classicism tied to the history of the city and the design bravery symbolizing the desire to look ahead, towards the future. […] From catalog London Calling
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Londra, Fra parentesi | 120 x 107 x 4 cm 19
Londra, Fasciati in blu | 130 x 130 x 4 cm 20
Londra, Gli Emergenti #2 | 160 x 180 x 4 cm 21
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Londra, I funghi | work and detail | 120 x 110 x 4 cm 23
Londra, Ai blocchi di ripartenza | 160 x 105 x 4 cm 24
Torino, La cittĂ che sale | 130 x 130 x 4 cm 25
Parigi, L’organo architettonico | 150 x 170 x 4 cm 26
Parigi, La boîte à joujoux | 150 x 150 x 4 cm 27
[…] In a game backwards, at the end of our journey we got to the installation work chosen as the cover image of this catalogue: the flow of voices translates into a Palace of Words and is projected outside, to direct us towards Rue Simon-Crubellier n. 11, the imaginary street of the non-existing palace thought by Georges Perec in his novel La vie mode d’emploi. The events of this “hypertext fiction” are held in a block composed of ten floors of ten rooms each, shaping a double square of a hundred elements, whose front façade allows to view each room immediately and simultaneously. In the story, which proceeds as a knight in the chess game, each room will be touched but one, that will be the only one never occupied by any event told of the one-hundred-year life of the building. One hundred photos will make the simulacrum building of Rue Crubellier n. 11, a game of preparation and of signs that intersect, in the desire of distinguishing and seeing beyond the image: “Being or nothing, that is the question. Ascending, descending, coming, going, a man does so much that in the end he disappears. A taxi bears him off, a metro carries him away, the tower doesn’t care, nor the Pantheon. Paris is but a dream2”. From catalog PhotoParis
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1 R. Queneau, Zazie in the Metro, Einaudi, Torino 1970, p. 67.
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Parigi, Rue Simon-Crubellier n.11 | 200 x 200 x 4 cm (20 x 20 x 4 cad.) 29
Parigi, I piantatori di monumenti | 100 x 150 x 4 cm 30
Venezia, I Circensi | 120 x 150 x 4 cm 31
Parigi, Isola di stelle | 110 x 140 x 4 cm 32
Parigi, Lanterne rosse | 100 x 110 x 4 cm 33
Genova, Il Viaggiatore immobile | 130 x 130 x 4 cm 34
Milano EXPO, Il Sauro goloso | 130 x 130 x 4 cm 35
Bilbao, Il Tessitore | 100 x 200 x 4 cm 36
Parigi, La balena | 160 x 115 x 4 cm 37
[…] Nicolò is used to projects that go beyond the boundaries, projects where Art and Literature dialogue together. He has imagined these building like an ultrasound machine to capture the echo of people and with a trick, buildings become alive through words printed on books pages, books printed on the buildings’ period. Buildings voice becomes loud and visible and it shows the town soul. In between picture and painting, Palazzi di parole, Palaces of Words provide sight, sound, touch, even smell sensations of familiar but sometimes granted images. […] From catalog Heartismi n.2 - Nicolò Quirico
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Praga, Ginger and Fred | 150 x 100 x 4 cm 39
Alveare urbano con parole stanche #2 | 165 x 175 x 20 cm 40
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Napoli, Spaccanapoli | 160 x 200 x 4 cm 42
Parigi, La Voliera | 130 x 130 x 4 cm 43
Napoli, Spaccanapoli | 160 x 200 x 4 cm
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Napoli, La serenata | 130 x 130 x 4 cm
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Napoli, Stella del Sud | 150 x 150 x 4 cm 46
Genova, Il Tramaglio architettonico | 200 x 80 x 4 cm 47
Venezia, Di antiche pene | 120 x 100 x 4 cm 48
Venezia, Muleta per toro lagunare | 130 x 130 x 4 cm 49
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Genova, Acque chete | 30 x 300 x 4 cm 51
Genova, I tre fratelli | 100 x 150 x 4 cm 52
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Nicolò Quirico
Monza, 1966
Nicolò Quirico has worked on visual communication and publishing since 1985, when he graduated at the Istituto Statale d’Arte in Monza. From 1996 to 2004 he worked on the Organization of the Morlotti-Imbersago Prize and began his artistic research, starting from the use of photography to create conceptual installations. He created refined matches between imagination and memory, between history and fantasy, as the travelling exhibition dedicated to the river Adda and the Bestiario dell’ora blu, published in the Il fotografo magazine. In 2009 he won the second edition of the national Prize organized by the Fondazione Piero e Vittorio Alinari of Florence entitled Fotografare il territorio. In 2013 he won the Prize ORA and Confini 10.
photo by Giudicianni&Biffi
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Selection of solo and group exhibitions 2019 Wings of desire - ART IN Gallery, Milano 2018 La bellezza resta – Museo Civico di Chiusa / Stadtmuseum Klausen, Chiusa (Bz) 2018 Palazzi di Parole - ART IN Gallery, Milano 2018 La bellezza resta – Palazzetto dei Nobili, L’Aquila 2018 Obiettivo 1. – XXS aperto al contemporaneo, Palermo 2017 La bellezza resta – BiffiI Arte Contemporanea, Piacenza 2017 Lustro – Costantini Art Gallery, Milano 2017 PhotoParis – Alliance Française, Bologna 2016 Genova – Palazzo del Parco, Diano Marina, a cura della Civiero Art Gallery di Diano Castello (IM) 2016 Camera chiara – Costantini Art Gallery, Milano 2016 La bellezza resta – Binario 7, Monza (MB) 2016 Lo spazio di un sogno – Villa Greppi, Monticello Brianza 2016 Palazzi di Parole - Spazio BVK, Venezia 2016 Palazzi di Parole - XXS aperto al contemporaneo, Palermo 2016 Milano Il corpo e il luogo - Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea Castello di Masnago, Varese 2016 Premio Internazionale Lìmen Arte - Complesso Valentianum, Vibo Valentia 2015 Patchwork - Must Gallery, Lugano - CH 2015 Audit & Contemporary Art - Audirevi S.r.l., Milano 2015 Genova - Galleria Rotta-Farinelli, Genova 2015 PhotoParis - Must Gallery, Lugano - CH 2015 PhotoShow - PhotoParis, Milano 2015 Non solo parole - Associazione Ars Now Seragiotto, Lido di Venezia - a cura di Costantini Art Gallery 2014 Patchwork - MUST Gallery, Lugano - CH 2014 Tutt’intorno - Quadreria Bovara Reina, Malgrate (LC) 2014 Spemuta per l’estate - Costantini Art Gallery, Milano 2014 London Calling - Costantini Art Gallery, Milano 2014 Pensieri, parole e architetture - Palazzo del Parco, Diano Marina, a cura della Civiero Art Gallery di Diano Castello (IM) 2013 Tacà insèma - Costantini Art Gallery, Milano 2013 Palazzi di Parole - Spazio SeiCentro, Milano 2013 Complicità sovrapposte - Costantini Art Gallery, Milano 2013 Pagine d’architettura - galleria La Contemporanea, Torino 2013 Premio Confini - Roma, Milano, Genova, Trieste, Mestre (VE) 2012 Palazzi di Parole - Spazio Heart, Vimercate (MB) 2012 Palazzi di Parole – Spazio Natta, Como 2010 Spiaggia MetàFisica - Spazio Polifemo, Fabbrica del vapore, Milano 2010 BORMIO pietre di carta - Temporary Art Gallery Paola Sosio, mostra itinerante in spazi pubblici e privati della Lombardia © Nicolò Quirico 2019 | translation by Sergio Knipe 55
Nicolò Quirico www.quirico.com
Vessillo per abitanti eroici | 165 x 220 x 20 56
