Gabriele Ercoli.
Gabriele Ercoli was born in the countryside of Fermo, when, raising his eyelashes above the furrows traced by his mother, the motionless city appeared a solemn and distant pyramid. In his fingers on the ground he spit it. Earth to the mouth perceived earlier, flavor inside and outside that mobile cradle. So barefoot in the bed of the Ete Vivo river, crossed in the nursery in the hands of Assunta, just to see the colorful wooden wagons made by Alessandro in the grandparents' house. His first movable wooden toys fixed with nails. Such is the fate of art in the Institute of Fermo. Six years between ceramics and metals. Then the Arno, the flood, another city of earth and mud. Excavations and rediscoveries, experiences, the first chisels in marble, the “planed” cut of gouges for wood fibers, studies. And the title of master of art, with honors, in 1968. From one campaign to another, seven years of fog in Caravaggio. Back to the origins, inside the magic of the Sibillini, rediscovery of his land, Arcadia, while that of his grandfather vanished. The golden tree made of two, a maple full of clusters. The vines climbing to the veteran grandfather's house. The black of manure, hot, ripe and steaming. The source of cold water inside the well. Where you can see the sky. The great white cow day and night on the ground as in the stable. The Greece of memory.
In 1984, he spontaneously joined the "Il Basilisco" group; between dough, light and colors from the fire. Exhibition of terracotta in 1986 at the gallery L’idioma di A. Piceno with the title "Stealing from the earth". In the same year the participation in the International Competition of Ceramics of Faenza. Since 1988, after leaving the group, he dwells within the walls of the ancient city where, thanks to the craftsman Pericles, he manages to occupy the Church of the Congregation of Artists and Merchants, deconsecrated for years: a large crypt of the Church of San Martino where he will live for six years the double magic of the studio. The place was full of energy.
At night time beat dilated to the breath of a great owl, who nested on the throne of a gigantic apse. Presence and tension were felt inside the church-studio, as in the attic of the house of origin. It seemed as if we were never alone. Psyche took his fate by thinking back to when his mother accompanied him to that same place for the Ascension at Matins. The initiation. The first canvases, in the dialogue between aspirations, myths, Gabriel, artists, shadow world and memory. From one land to "another", also of him: The discovery. The first “Essays” sunk in those industrial wood fibers (medium density) discarded by the Brestoli and Gentili carpentries. Tablets compressed, separated, fractured and in open tension, weakened at the molecular level, with which the artist immediately feels empathy, immediately considering them Antimatter.
At the same time, the Illumination in front of the works of Osvaldo Licini at Monte Vidon Corrado. The furnace bricks of the town appeared to be gold. The Byzantine light of the fiber, thrown, which in the meantime was being experimented, the "marks" like horsehair revealed themselves mixed with those of Licini, white lumps frayed in the sky of the "Lunar Missiles". The epiphanies of his tools, of his clothes, of sticks, of poetic writings, of places, were like divinatory; so much so that the artist remains fixed on the works blissfully seated on the ground, "Timeless". An immanent phenomenon. As happened to Rothko staring several times at the work Atelier Rouge; by Matisse. Later even the numbers, (88 × 88 + 8; it is the title of a work), symbolically mark this time of art.
The historical avant-gardes, the confidence in the trans-avant-garde period, the creativity and the unpredictability of the new material push us to discover the interaction of the pigments portrayed by the absorbency of the medium. Other artists, in an Orphic sense, contribute to the training: Leonardo, Michelangelo, Giorgione, Bacon, Goya, Munch, Van Gogh, Matisse, Rothko, Burri and more directly the expressionist masters of Umbrian-Marches wood art. The landscape is now excavated inside, magnetic, magmatic and lunar. During the Gulf War, Ercoli 88; the first solo show: the land of origin becomes everyone's. Opera, A moon wall and a window of darkness, the gentle furrows of grandfather's fields opposite the trenches buried by bulldozers in Iraq. The "Astro" work, magnetic and circular. "The Anarchist Angel", black, with broken wings. Vibrant, metallic, melted, destroyed cities, of which “It Seemed Impossible”.
In '; 93 he exhibited 123 Places ;. The first time of the large bare and "amorphous" tables, split and opposed to the living internal fibers drawn on the surface. Among these "Chino", which together with the "Archetype Passage"; and "88 × 88 + 8"; he was awarded the international MIART award and the exhibition at the Philippe Daverio gallery (Mi) with the five "Haggadah" Texts. Gian Ruggero Manzoni, curator of the catalog for the “123 Places” exhibition, writes about “tablets found under geolinguistic stratifications”.
In 1995, before taking refuge in the basement of Palazzo Azzolino, at Spazio Zero; of the study church to be cleared out, he exhibits on an easel “Passage Archetipo”, a ripped cobalt from which a bluer scale-star detaches itself from the depth of the sky. From this place he brings with him a wooden table written, on both sides, with a double hook, above and below the frame. So that it can flip over and turn. And warning of the offices for the dead, as well as the dead, by moving it, has always made us think of the fate of a painting by Malevich that the revolutionaries had hung upside down and of Licini's doubleface drawings. The fire burns inside the big library of Sarajevo. From the Fermano plateaus, the white roads perpendicular to the sea burn like lit bullets, on the same sky. In the same basement-bunker, hidden in the silence of the new studio, little air and no light, like a scribe, he continues to dig and beat the boards until they pass them like telluric implosions: it is the series of FrattiNeri or naturale, which highlight reality naked compressed inside the naked table. The critic Roberta Ridolfi, in front of these works, quotes Michelangelo talking about the stripping of the soul and the absorption of history. The poet Lucilio Santoni, quoting Jean-Luc Nancy, writes for Ercoli: "There is a voice in the community that is articulated from interruption and interruption." In the same period in SpoletoScienza on the theme of Care he listens to the anthropologist Remo Guidieri, author of "The Path of the Dead", while he cites the work of Titian "The Condemnation of Marzia" flayed alive.
They meet by chance in Moresco. They understand each other and pass the Colfiorito plateau several times together, drink water at the pass of the sky and stop sometimes awaited by their friend Angelo the Indian, before "throwing themselves" by car into the Franciscan Val Topina. In 96, on the occasion of the Communist Refoundation party, he set up four cardinal works in the pine forest of Porto S. Giorgio, of which "Chicchirichì" was oriented to the east as an alarm to get up to denounce the humanitarian massacre perpetuated on the Adriatic. In 1997, invited by the Scientific Committee of the Osvaldo Licini Study Center, he exhibited in Monte Vidon
Corrado “Adriatico”, in the mirror sense. On the bottom of the sea neither fish nor Lysippos but bombs. An advanced research that sinks into the medium and into history. Fermo is facing the world and reality a large hideous altarpiece that falls on us terrifyingly. On this occasion, Remo Guidieri, in the writing G: E: 1, highlights symbiotic and symbolic affinities between the artist and his medium, the attachment to his land and his gaze towards the sky.
"Cielo di Cerreto", a gift for his friend Giuseppe, directly cut out of the blue. The work Olmo, a tribute to Osvaldo Licini, planted on the terrace in front of his house, a prelude to the theme of the Wood.
The Tower, in the Ercoli 999 catalog, an idea for Moresco that has remained in the imagination.
Numbers and Time continue to preserve art, archetypes of a new flow for Gallery 999; which takes its name. The one in via degli Aceti (in the studio, also in the basement), refers to a double journey represented in two works of 88-; 89: a canvas painted in oil with a Picasso goddess, Isis? who enters the Underworld soaked in water (Roman Cisterns), while an ogival portal in Via Leopardi collapses as it passes, between goldfish and an announcing bird; A carved and painted panel representing a grate uprooted on via degli Aceti, thinking of Paul Klee: title: “Transfiguration”.
The Roman impasto stone set in the masonry, behind the artist who works at the usual bench, has become a cloud, bubbles of light breach, among the blue Oracles, other works-clouds. Outside, in the courtyard, on the axis carved into the rock of a column, a flower blooms today, near the tall carved stems of the Wood, which, narrow in space, sink their phantom hair into the only blue passing, that of the clouds. , of the sky.
At the turn of the millennium, enriched by the value of his research, more and more convinced of his antigestos, of the possibilities of his other material in Art and in the World, the artist continues to renew the strong gestures of his fathers, translating the beating into the tables violent history. The Antimatter shaken from behind (while acting conceals the front) by the mallet of Ercoli stretches, resists, yields, explodes into space, breaks. The Table rises, opens into the internal space, separated in layers and fixes its collapse like a fan. The black work thus solicited is now firm in its entirety, on the front it lives life from its depth: mallet, clamps, wedges, industrial pencil, ax, gouge, chisels, sign-saw. Orthopraxis; right economy of means, primary gestures. Daniele Van De Velde will write about an artist who has decided not to lose sight or hand, the original land that fixes and alone gives meaning, similar in his gestures aimed at reaching it, to the child who with a huge effort pushes himself with the forehead towards the light of birth. In 2002 he sets up a situation in the Periferie house-museum; exhibiting “La Dea Delle Lucciole” on the open stubble fields; modern synthesis of three archaic cultures, with ceramics, water and light. For the same museum, he participates in the collective exhibition “Del Guardare e Del See” (December 13, Saint Lucia's day), creating two pre-printed black trays, closed in mirror image, with the opposite surfaces torn in the shape of eyes. In 2003, he exhibited the “Bosco degli Estensi” in Ferrara, a highly evocative poetic choice related to the place. Nearby, hanging from the sails of the Castle, the "Ships of the Air". The same year he exhibited the works "La Grande Zolla", "Bosco" and "Fratti" at the Orange Gallery in Grottammare. In 2004, with the FrattiNeri series; he exhibited Mesopotamia in the former Agricultural Consortium of Fermo, which was partially destroyed by the collapses. Then the series of situations in the studio: “Il Tipografo”, a modern cylinder of paper wrapped with a ceramic head of the printer on top of it looking at the wall at the first red “Impronte” printed without a press; “Appesi alla Luna”: a very tall vase-figure made in doves inspired by the archaic Picena pottery placed on top of a half-globe made of wood shavings.
For Christmas 2006, he exhibits "A Leaf is Born, naked from her cradle": a "nest" of water dug inside the table upside down like a clod and open to shell-like light.
Unpredictable works in turned and flexed wood fiber that fix the moment in the passage of maximum tension and poetic expressiveness. Model, the face, the figure of the peasant shot in Goya's canvas, a continuous, decisive presence. Voices that speak to you in the artist's journey. Inner voices, which can be recognized by climbing the magical Sibyl mountain or by recreating a ceramic alter ego in the studio: "Argo Fermo", which seems to have come out of the water to fly in the sky destined to travel by rotating in the cosmos of art guided by a Goddess.
In 2007 he exhibited "Luce nella Luce" in Bergamo with his thoughts turned to the light of Lotto's inlays in Santa Maria Maggiore. In the same year, he was invited for a group exhibition by the Dieci.due! in Milan, exhibits the work "Caravella" in the Montica palace in Pordenone: 22 plastic camels stowed on a transparent raft for a double trip of waves and dunes and "Sottto Sopra" relating to Italy. He then exhibited in his studio in via Padova, transformed into a gallery (Ghost Gallery), the new Milanese works, also in M.D.F. pre-colored, found in the heart of Brianza. In 2008 he exhibited on the island of Milan "The indecipherable nature of the Oracle": 24 black fractured works and "war and lead" splinters, two Milanese visitors in front of the works ask the artist if, the forms they see in the reliefs of the works are bullets? Ercoli, surprised, replies: "Yes sir, but how did you recognize them?". One of the ladies in turn: “Because I saw them in Milan during the war”. It is Christmas, after just a month, the Israeli massacre of the operation in Gaza called "Cast Lead" begins. On June 3, 2009 in Milan, thanks to the Blancheart Gallery, he sets up "The Tree of Light" in the Oratorium Passioniss in Sant'Ambrogio, a founding gift to the city in cultural crisis and a response to the Italian pavilion of the Venetian Biennale curated by Luca Beatrice who, in Northern League style, transposes a rhetorical group of friends to the lagoon.
In 2010 it occupies the 1000 square meters of the former Agricultural Consortium of Servigliano (FM), in 4 months it heals, whitens it, lights it up and sets it up for the "Quattro4" exhibition. Ideal synthesis where art and earth merge: symbols, reality, poetics, suggested by the square plan of the city and the 4 spans of the structure. Double epicenter of Earth where the related work emerges in the world before museums reduce its full evocative function, snatching it from the oblivion of the places where it was born.
In 2011 "PERLASO", an exhibition of 16 works, extended for 80 km from the Sibillini to the Adriatic, which following the water of the river reflects the eternal. An authentic proposal that shows the works in the places and places where they were born and against "ILLUMInazioni" by the impotent critic Sgarbi who, without choosing them, piles Tir of works in the lagoon. Destiny of the same year, the choice of the work "Appesi alla Luna" for the Venice Biennale by the "rude signaler" for the Marche, director of the Urbino academy. Ercoli, documented, refuses to exhibit because he disagrees with the director's proposal which involved changing the half-globe part of the work exchanged by his incompetence as a basis. Instead, he accepts the choice for the work "FrattoNero" "recommended" by Walter Scotucci and exhibited at the Sala Nervi in Turin, again for the same Venice Biennale. But, after the inauguration of the Star Sgarbi characterized at the entrance to the pavilion by a rhetorical Pignatelli and a cloned Boetti signed by Nespolo, the artist present decides to withdraw the work.
In 2012 MAZZETTA NERA, set up in the mill of S. Benedetto di Rapagnano along the Faleriense provincial road from where the artist gives at night to passing motorists "AAArcore serigraphed freshly minted banknotes released in series from the rotating pulleys of the same mill".
2015 "L’ALBERO della LUCE" set up in Fermo: two interventions on a sacred place founding the city, still in the presence of water, tree and altar.
a) It overturns the dead Cedar on the Gyrfalcon hill reflected in large mirrors placed on the lawn, such that its double stem, penetrating the earth with its double power, evokes the axis of the cosmos. He thus creates the Sacred Tree that dresses in mosaic and bright light reflected from the sun on tactile ribbons. Sound and vibrating throughout the structure in the breath of the wind.
b) digs poetic verses on the earth that evoke the overturned tree, renewing the sense of undeath. The users experience the work in emotion, passing suspended between two skies hovering over a narrow walkway.
2016 TRIENNALE di ROMA selected by the scientific commission with the work "Apparition" for the 2017 exhibition at the Vittoriano with the following motivation: "for the quality of his works and for the refined and profound language that characterizes all his work". 2018 Participates in the collective "Art experience" organized by the Wikiarte Gallery of Bologna.
OF THE OPERA
The art of Ercoli was born from the myth and poetry of the places between the magic of the Sibylline and beyond the sea. He discovers a new medium that he calls antimatter because it refers to what is not. An adverse and poetic molecular industrial fiber, which he treats on the surface with exclusive gestures (with praise those he reached in Florence in '68) evokes, changes beyond sound. He experiences it in the series of "Essays interpreting the land he lived poetically with the filter of the avant-garde (works:" Zolla di Altidona "," Marina "," Iride "). Then constrained by post-modernity, by kitsch, by the conformist invasion of the spectacle paradoxically opposed to the immanent violence of reality, he seeks a possibility outside of them. He immerses himself in an extended time (including a poem of the beginning projected into the future) to listen to the magnetic silence of art and existence going back to the time of the origins: significant works "Annunciation", with the luminous absorption of black - " NeroLuce "(homage to Matisse), a reference confirming the announcement -" Tabernacle and Cave ", which translate from the metaphysical to the world and to history: works" Triology of History "-" Apparition ", the open and separate antimatter reveals, art appears to the artist - "Tables of Art", the principle of every work. All works that renew the gestures and the use of technical means of the ancestors.
In 1988, the lighting in front of the works of O. Licini in Monte Vidon Corrado: even the bricks of the furnace of the town, in the magic of the sunset, appeared gold (works "Trasfigurazione" or "Astro", magmatic, of antithetical chemistry , which filtered in the medium for colors flourish on the surface).
At the passage of '89 the ravine of the world blinds the artist (works "Marco's horizon", "Red seven", "FrattiNeri" and "FrattiNaturali", poetry [in the wild green ...]). Ercoli suffers a double loss: the beauty of his grandfather's land and the “Greek” beauty of the peasant culture he lived.
This thought and this beauty are concentrated in a dystopian way in the depth of the art and in the depth of the table that breaks with blows of the bat right into the fiber at the beating of history: a new language is born, visionary, substantiated by contemporary.
Meanwhile, the flashes of war continue to burn the Adriatic, the artist's gaze, descending the east, fixes the dramatic passage. From the land of the veteran grandfather to the land of all raped: Mesopotamia (work of 91: "A wall of the moon, a window of darkness"), Afghanistan, Palesytina, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, (work "ArgoFermo", "on 'orbit of the moon ”).
Ercoli's Antigesto strikes down on the work by repeating the same violent gesture in the world, the antimatter overtaken and shaken from the back (work of the beginning "Dietrosimbolo", 1992), while action conceals the front, is charged with energy , its molecular fiber flexes, tears, explodes, it seems to imitate the friction of the telluric motions of the world which slide apart from the nuclei by opposition.
An Infinite Principle. ("P &" is also the title of a drawing made by the artist in the 90s
prelude to “Frattocosmo”). From the void of the naked, amorphous and compressed table, the excavation begins again, a mysterious birth that brings to light each work before falling into its “silent” black. Now, the magnetic work absorbs us, lives suspended in its deafening silence generated by an antigesto that resets time, its beauty of earth fixes us from eternity, freezes in the black fractures and holes that ancestral scream in the moment of its doing.
Gabriel
