(Eng. text below)
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Galleria Six è lieta di annunciare la mostra personale di Terry Atkinson.
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Per la sua terza mostra alla Galleria Six, sarà presentato un nuovo ciclo di opere intitolato FRONTISPIECE che verrà esposto insieme ad opere di Atkinson della fine degli anni settanta e ottanta.
Un dialogo tra un presente e un passato che si ripropone attuale.
Gli elementi iniziali della nuova serie di opere, tuttora in corso, sono due libri.
Il primo è From Humanism to Hobbes: Studies in Rhetoric and Politics di Quentin Skinner, pubblicato nel 2018.
Il secondo è The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution di Christopher Hill, pubblicato nel 1964. A questi due stimoli ne segue rapidamente un terzo, innescato dal fatto che Atkinson ha introdotto un suo ritratto del 1964 come motivo ricorrente in alcune opere della serie.
(Gross David with Swoln Cheek di T J Clark: An Essay on Self-Portraiture)
"Le opere sono un mix di parole e immagini che considero rilevanti per il compito da svolgere. Le parole sono frontespizio, portale, soglia, hubris e forse altre che verranno man mano che la serie andrà avanti. Le immagini, per ora, sono fotocopie delle mie due figlie da piccole in visita al campo di concentramento tedesco di Natzwiller-Struthof nei Vosgi, immagini di Goya, un mio ritratto, il frontespizio di Hobbes per il Leviatano e altre immagini. Cerco di costruire le opere anche attraverso la risonanza delle parole iscritte sui tableaux - Portal, qualcosa che si vede attraverso o da cui si guarda; Threshold, qualcosa che si attraversa; Hubris - in questo caso un tentativo di gestire il concetto di artista come proiezione estrema e sicura di sé, il modello dell'artista come centro di verità autoconfermante. E così via..."
Terry Atkinson April 2nd, 2025
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Galleria Six is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by Terry Atkinson. For his third exhibition at Galleria Six, a new cycle of works entitled FRONTISPIECE will be presented and exhibited together with Atkinson's works from the late 1970s and 1980s. A dialogue between a present and a past that comes alive again.
The initial elements of the new series of works, which is still ongoing, are two books. The first is From Humanism to Hobbes: Studies in Rhetoric and Politics by Quentin Skinner, published in 2018. The second is Christopher Hill's The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution, published in 1964.
These two stimuli are quickly followed by a third, triggered by the fact that Atkinson introduced a portrait of himself from 1964 as a recurring motif in some of the works in the series.
"The works are a mix of certain what I consider to be relevant words and images relevant to the task in hand. The words are frontispiece, portal, threshold, hubris, and maybe some others to come as the series move on. The images , thus far, are photocopies of my two daughters when they were young on a visit to German concentration camp at Natzwiller-Struthof in the Vosges, images from Goya, a portrait of myself, Hobbes’ frontispiece for Leviathan, and a number of other images.I attempt to construct the works not least through resonating the words inscribed on the tableaux - Portal, something you see through or view from; Threshold, something you cross; Hubris – in this case an attempt to maneouvre the concept of the artist as an extreme self-assured projection, the model of the artist as a self-confirming centre of truth. And so on …"
Terry Atkinson April 2nd, 2025
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Terry Atkinson (1939, Thurnscoe, UK). Lives and works in Leamington Spa. An English visual artist and theorist, in his long career he has challenged the traditional conception of aesthetics in art, criticising the conventions of artistic production and fruition. ‘If the work I have made over the last 40 years,’ says Atkinson, ’has one characteristic that runs through it, it is a concern to make a critique of art rather than a celebration of it. After studying at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, he emigrated to New York in 1967 where he met minimalist, conceptual and land artists such as Sol LeWitt, Dan Graham, Carl Andre and Robert Smithson. In 1968 he founded the conceptual collective Art & Language together with Michael Baldwin, Harold Hurrell and David Bainbridge, together they exhibited at documenta 5 (1972) curated by Harald Szeemann. He left the group in 1974 to pursue a solo career. He exhibited in 1984 at the 41st Venice Art Biennale. In 1985 he was a finalist for the Turner Prize.