Renato Nicolodi, Concealment and Disclosure

Renato Nicolodi
Concealment and Disclosure
Axel Vervoordt Gallery, Hong Kong
March 23 – May 18, 2024

Axel Vervoordt Gallery is proud to present Renato Nicolodi’s solo exhibition Concealment and Disclosure, the fifth solo exhibition with the artist and second in Hong Kong. Concealment and Disclosure debuts work on paper and a video work, alongside six acrylic paintings on canvas and two monumental concrete sculptures.

An architectural structure made up of corridors, archways, and colonnades. Round arches and columns support cross vaults or ceilings inlaid with rectangular concave volumes. An interplay of stairs and floors leads the eye along an architectural journey that travels, to a central, dark void.

Belgian artist Renato Nicolodi (°1980, Brussels) offers a platform through this void, to be filled by the spectator’s own reflections, ponderings, or contemplations. A resting point in a rapidly changing society can be a possible answer, but also a starting point for further questions. Nicolodi’s artworks can always only be entered and discovered mentally. Never are they scale models or maquettes for larger constructions. Even when a sculpture was realised on a larger scale, as happened several times in recent years in various places in Belgium, the finality was mental contemplation, due to the tranquillity such a sculpture could offer. Never could they be used as, say, shelters or something with a domestic function: always they remained “non-functional” in their true nature.

Nicolodi was trained as a painter, and yet in recent decades, he has mainly made a name for himself as a sculptor. Even in his sculptures, the process, the train of thought, is painterly: it is about one plane or volume for another, with Malevich-wise—the square and the circle as starting points. It’s one of many dualities in Nicolodi’s work, alongside light versus dark, full versus empty, equal versus different sides, and sometimes contradictory special proportions. Or, in Latin, as one of the painting’s titles, “Apertus et Clausus”: open and closed, public and private, visible and hidden, or free and restricted. This exhibition, Concealment and Disclosure, shows artworks on
paper for the first time: the inherent lightness of the material contrasts with the robust, say heavy, architectural structures.

Nicolodi’s visual language is always universal; the architecture is archetypal. Swiss psychotherapist Carl Gustav Jung defined archetypes as fundamental, universal symbolic images and patterns deeply rooted in humanity’s collective unconscious, activated by cultural symbols, among others. For Nicolodi, they are architectural constructions spanning the entire human building history, from ancient Egypt, Rome, Greece, or Mesopotamia, to the brutalism of the second half of last century, or even more recent scenographies and constructions. Titles of artworks sometimes still provide an impetus for interpretation, recalling antiquity: an “Aedes”, for example, to which the large concrete sculpture owes its title, was the central sacred space or sanctuary in which the statue of the gods stood in a Roman temple. But Nicolodi’s vocabulary transcends narrow definitions of styles, periods of cultural history, or even time in general. “Universal” can also be interpreted in the sense of “timeless”.

Emptiness is a repeating universal and psychological concept, and it is recurrent in Nicolodi’s work, leaving it vacant for interpretations and readings by viewers. It can be interpreted that Jung’s uncharted territories of our minds, in summary, are realms of emptiness. But the concept of emptiness has also been elaborated in concepts from the philosophy of other continents: for example, the Japanese concept of Ma embraces emptiness as a dynamic force of contemplation, creativity, or deeper experiences. Compare also with the concept of Kong (空): emptiness as a state of openness that creates space for reflection, growth, or development. There are no concrete or “correct” interpretations in Nicolodi’s universal constructions. However, some of the architectural forms evoke memories of totalitarian, imperialist regimes throughout world history. The artist seems to ask, “How do we deal with this heritage? Can inherent artistic qualities be appreciated even if they recall periods we would rather not be reminded of?” Again, a contrast is the starting point of reflections and possible conversations.

As a child, Nicolodi made cassette recordings of his family testimonies—dark in nature, and difficult for a child to process. They were stories of allegations of collaboration and incarceration, but also of joining the resistance and longing for freedom. As a prisoner of war, his grandfather helped build the Atlantic Wall, an extensive defence system built by Nazi Germany along the coast of Western Europe. Nicolodi’s artistic transition from painter to sculptor was also shaped by creating concrete paintings that were actually prints of bunker walls, specifically of this Atlantic Wall. His work grew out of a personal story and has resulted in a platform for reflection and contemplation, available to the whole society in flux.

Concealment and Disclosure shows further artistic discoveries: for the first time, a video work, which is a meditative journey between two extremes—a virtual walk where an architectural space unfolds. The works on paper are also a new elaboration: here it is the material itself that provides the relief, and the feeling of mentally entering a depth, through stairs.