LIS10 Gallery is pleased to open the 2021 exhibition program with a double show by Gonçalo Mabunda and Massimo Kaufmann, thank to the collaboration with Giovanni Bonelli Gallery.
In his last production Massimo Kaufmann expresses – with the use of oil on canvas- his intention to render chromatic atmospheres pictorially and to make visible the duration of the creative process. The works are the result of a precise and meticulous dropping on the canvas often set horizontally. Kaufmann says that he paints “…without narrative or descriptive support (…) [using] one color and all the colours -to avoid symbolic snares- “. His slow painting with overlaps of transparent colours can be read as a process of growing medidation with gestures that gradually reduce to the minimum. Some large scale works by Italian artist will be displayed with the sculptures by Gonçalo Mabunda (that represented his nation at the last Venice Biennale in 2019).
Mabunda converts dismantled war materials that were in use during the long and bloody civil wars – 16-year – that affected his country (Mozambique). The artist appropriates of all kind of war waste -bullets, bombs, files- and then assembles them with the final shape of masks and thrones.
Mabunda’s masks have a strong evocative power and maintain the symbolic and ritual values of the ancient African tribal masks that are part of the artist’s culture and tradition, while converted in a contemporary way.
