Oliviero Rainaldi
Works 2003-2013

Partners & Mucciaccia is pleased to present Works 2003-2013, an anthology of works by one of the most significant Italian artists: Oliviero Rainaldi (Caramanico Terme, Pescara 1956). Works 2003-2013, will be held from November 2013 to February 2014. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue with essays by Peter Benson Miller and Alessandra Mammì. Oliviero Rainaldi, after the great success of the impressive exhibition Aquae at the Venice International University, on the occasion of the 55. Venice Biennial, presents his first solo exhibition in Asia, one of the most awaited events of the year. It features works spanning the last ten years of his career, as well as ten new paintings created especially for this exhibition. Works 2003-2013 provides an overview of Rainaldi’s work over the last decade, focusing on the metaphysical nature of the human figure. He has explored this theme through drawings, paintings, sculptures in different materials, including bronze, plaster, gold, marble and glass. Rainaldi, who was awarded the title of Academic of the Pontifical Academy of Fine Arts and Letters of the Virtuosi of the Pantheon during the Jubilee of 2000, is also the author of the statue dedicated to Pope John Paul II inaugurated in May 2011. Conversazioni, this majestic statue measuring seven meters in height conveying the protective and welcoming Papal embrace, is a masterpiece known around the world. Oliviero Rainaldi is in fact one of the few contemporary artists who pursues sacred art with deep ardour, maintaining in the process the strength of interpretation of his own language; for the event in Singapore he reveals the process behind the evolution of Conversazioni with a series of works dedicated to the future saint John Paul II. This small exhibition inside the larger exhibition features a selection of drawings, plasters and bronzes. Peter Benson Miller, the Andrew Heiskell Arts Director at the American Academy in Rome, writes: Oliviero Rainaldi leaves much unsaid, achingly unspecified, preferring to sculpt and paint figures veiled in mystery. While mute, his attenuated sculptural figures and vaporous bodies rendered in transparent washes on canvas speak volumes. His restraint and economy of means are underpinned by a rich trove of allusions to the art and thought of the past. A recent series of paintings, for example, conceived expressly for this exhibition, revisit Edgar Degas’ women at the toilette. He translates Degas’ late-career obsession with a private feminine ritual into hushed whispers, spontaneous and elusive shades applied to canvas. Sculptures instead combine the lean hieratic lines of Greek Kouroi with the sleek Art Deco androgyny of the Oscar statuette. Rainaldi bends them however in a manner that suggests individual spiritual yearning more than communal or commercial fetishization. The play of light animating their contours gently dissolves his undulating forms into atmospheric sfumature, fusing the exterior surface with the enigmatic narrative unfolding within.