Group exhibition, 'Between Emptiness and Form: Exploring Emotion and Essence'

Axel Vervoordt Gallery features Marco Tirelli, Renato Nicolodi, and Otto Boll, in dialogue in their search for the interpretation of emptiness. The three artists, from different countries and generations, create within their distinctive explorations a harmonious whole of searching for what emptiness is for the artist, the viewer, and the space in between.

Italian artist Marco Tirelli was trained as a set designer, which taught him to play with light and shadow. In his artworks, Tirelli still references architecture, be it sacred or commemorative, alongside the holistic pictorial atlas–encyclopaedia of references that comprise his work. For Tirelli, painting is analytical and cognitive, investigating our perception of reality. The result is a kind of intermediate stage, between reality and the imaginary and invisible, between right and wrong – the application of his techniques and materials, which sometimes imitate something other than what they are, reinforces this idea. Each painting thereby lays claim to his artistic memory, vital for the reconstruction of the images, as to that of the viewer: free for interpretation and mental participation.

Through the pictorial shadow shapes, the contours of a window could be recognised in the two works shown here: a window through which the infinite is possible. Tirelli lives in a remote Italian village, where no nocturnal electric street lighting is possible. When he opens his window, he sees a “black square”, where the shapes of the landscape can only be reconstructed by memory. Just as Tirelli invites the viewer to participate, nature does the same with us.

Belgian artist Renato Nicolodi also invites the viewer to participate and reflect. In his sculptures and paintings, a scenography of stairs, corridors, colonnades, and overlaps, leads to a black void. The architecture is an archetypal summary of human building history, from Mesopotamia to modernism and everything in between, including the periods one would rather not be reminded of. Without taking a stand, Nicolodi turns his sculptures into platforms for contemplation by the viewer, who can project his thoughts into the void. In doing so, the void is the core of everything there is, of every possible thought.

In this way, Nicolodi's work is accessible and universal, although it is built on a highly personal family history, scarred by the scars of World War II. As a child, Nicolodi listened to the stories of his grandfather's captivity, forced to help build war infrastructure. The grave of his father — Renato's great-grandfather —was untraceable, but the legacy lived on through stories and narratives — through what could not be found but took place beyond the visible. It is a similar emptiness, in the sense of the absent, that the sculptures offer.

German artist Otto Boll uses emptiness not as a visual vocabulary, but as a conceptual starting point for artistic intervention. A void, he says, is a multitude of possibilities, a new start out of nothingness, something he must fill in as an artist. The creations oscillate between presence and absence, the seen and the unseen, suggesting both materiality and the void. Boll's subtle interplay of lines consisting of aluminium structures suspended on nylon threads can be compared to the Taoist notion of ‘wuji’, the original emptiness from which all things emerge. The subtlety and sense of movement and energy embodied by seemingly floating shadings are in turn like the Qi that flows through the body according to traditional Chinese medicine.

As in the work of Nicolodi and Tirelli, Boll's is an outstretched hand to the viewer, an invitation to participation. The mystery of the works resides in the movement, necessary for understanding. Visitors are invited to experience the sculptures, interact with them, and reflect on them — with language, pondering in one's own mind, or in correspondence with other visitors, or attendees at the event. At the same time, Boll also disrupts our idea of what is real and what is imaginary, simultaneously reminding us that a void is never empty, but is a source of potential.