GILLO DORFLES
NASCOSTI INTRECCI.
Edizioni Colophon, 2002

In-folio 52x37 cm

Edition printed in one hundred copies, of which this is the thirty-fifth.

Nascosti intrecci gathers the works of seven of the most prestigious artists designed for a man recognised by all as an exemplary intellectual and artistic reference.

Combined with youthful compositions by Dorfles himself, the graphics of Enrico Baj, Agostino Bonalumi, Enrico Castellani, Jannis Kounellis, Mimmo Paladino, Giulio Paolini and Arnaldo Pomodoro come to succession throughout the pages of this artist's book, parted graphically, but all linked together in a unicum that lives on the affection and esteem for the friend and critic Dorfles.

With an ironical gaze at the everyday life, Enrico Baj offers the image of a miniature female figure, made entirely out of collage, in which we should seek for the aunt who, in the poetic text on the side, wanted to fill the poet
with kisses and hugs, beared with the typical youthful impatience.

Vertigini nascoste (Hidden vertigo) pairss an intaglio-collage by Agostino Bonalumi, where the shaped image is positioned in a way that points out clearly the three-dimensionality, by making the lightness of the sign and the lightness of the image even more significant, still underlining the almost evanescence of the aquatint backgrounds.

Thanks to a strict bond with Dorfles himself who, by the way, finds a truly relevant historical point of reference for his artistic development in the first issue of the magazine Azimuth, Enrico Castellani creates an image in which the optical centre is shifted to the left of the geometric centre, as if he was trying to portray the non-rituality of hisanalysis and a tribute to the power of that analysis itself.

In the black on white lithograph on stone by Jannis Kounellis, the sign strongly marks the borders of a hypothetical maze, a metaphor not only for the artist's and scholar's research, but also for everyday life, in its every single and apparently secondary manifestation.

In his linoelography, Mimmo Paladino seems to suggest a tribute to Dorfles as a man, to his intellectual value and professional rigour, as well as to his moral integrity.

Giulio Paolini re-offers otherwise a very specifical image, a small paper with the word poetry on, on which Gillo Dorfles lingered on with particular attention on the occasion of Paolini's first solo exhibition in Milan at the Galleria dell'Ariete, in memory of an encouragement that will always accompany him in his artistic career.

In conclusion we find a bas-relief on paper by Arnaldo Pomodoro, whose internal tension finds a perfect reference in the verses by Dorfles: "Liquid pain the molten lead: in the water, in the vast tub, it turns into a hard, spongy boulder, bristling with recesses fixed without return in a hirsute form. Before it was a smooth surface, master of space.