The motionless space of becoming

La Salò Civic Drawing Collection organises events at the MuSa a major retrospective exhibition dedicated to Ben Ormenese (1930–2013), a leading figure in the world of’contemporary art and the object-oriented aspect. Defined by Agostino Bonalumi as «one of the best among us», Ormenese He lived and worked in the stimulating Milan of the 1960s and 1970s, a crucial period for the development of today’s artistic languages. The exhibition, curated by Anna Lisa Ghirardi e Leonardo Conti, comprises around thirty extremely rare works on paper and cardboard that trace the creative journey of the Friulian artist.

The journey through the exhibition explores the transition from figurative to abstract art, beginning with the artist’s early works on floral themes from 1966 and progressing towards a wholly non-figurative approach. Influenced by the Fontanian Spatialism, Ormenese develop a grammar based on assembly drawings, collage and mixed media works in which geometry, fragmentation and the refraction of light take centre stage. Despite the dramatic destruction of much of his body of work in the late 1970s – a gesture described as an act of profound intellectual honesty and methodological doubt – the exhibition presents valuable surviving examples.

The following sections feature works on cotton cardboard created after the year 2000, a period in which the surface is engraved with a surgical scalpel to allow light to pass through. Among these are the sequences of mirrored slats from the cycle of the LAM and the creations of the White period, where the contrast between the visible and the invisible shapes the perpetual and dynamic evolution of matter.