Opening Wednesday 3 April, 6.30 pm
From 4.04 to 11.05.2019
Antonio Colombo Arte Contemporanea is proud to present Quando, Quando, Quando, the two-person exhibition of Andy Rementer and Olimpia Zagnoli, both showing at the gallery for the second time.
The title of the exhibition, taken from a successful song of the 1960s by Tony Renis, is well suited to the lively yet melancholy atmospheres of Rementer’s works, as well as to the vaguely retro graphics of Olimpia Zagnoli.
The show contains about thirty artworks, including paintings, editions, drawings and neon works. On one hand there are, in fact, the colored canvases by Andy Rementer, on the other a new series of works by Olimpia Zagnoli, who for the first time abandons color to experiment with black and white shapes and lines.
Both artists have also designed and created for the first time ceramic sculptures, hand-painted in Italy, available in limited edition.
Andy Rementer, American, native of New Jersey, studied Graphic Design at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and worked as an illustrator and cartoonist for publications such as the New York Times, the New Yorker, Apartamento Magazine and Creative Review, while, as an animator, he collaborated with the broadcasting company MTV and the film studio Warner Bros. He worked for two years in Treviso at Fabrica, the Benetton Group’s communications research center, along with a handful of international researchers specialized in graphic design, photography, video, music and journalism. During his two-year stay in Italy, the artist developed a peculiar visual language inspired not only by design, comics and cartoons, but also by European art, from Romanesque art to the twentieth-century magical realism. In Rementer’s works, the urban landscape is the backdrop for a series of quick tales, ordinary stories that, however, reveal the extraordinary nature of the everyday experience.
The narrative plot is stripped down, the effects of the use of a synthetic language can be seen in the iconic impact of the figures, partially inherited from Pop Art and partially from the communicative economy of design, in which he has a background. The artist annuls the details of space and time and sets his characters in a silent but vibrant world.
Olimpia Zagnoli, born in Reggio Emilia, at six moves to Milan, where she attends classical high school and later graduates from the European Institute Of Design.
Her career begins during the following year, 2008, when her illustrations are published on Italian and international newspapers such as Il Sole 24 Ore and The New Yorker. Zagnoli, who draws as much from Futurism as from the Beatles, creates a personal style made of soft shapes and saturated colors.
Olimpia’s figures are in fact shaped by essential and geometric lines, that meet flat and bright backgrounds.
A chromatic proficiency, nourished with the observation of the great masters of graphic design and art, and then accurately re-elaborated into a personal visual language. The result is a fresh and essential work, with simple images able to communicate and represent a concept.
Her editorial collaborations include those for The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Apartamento, La Repubblica, Taschen. She illustrated children’s books titled The World Belongs To You, Mister Horizontal & Miss Vertical and her own interpretation of the classic The Wizard Of Oz.
Her lively images were the setting for the campaigns of brands such as Google, Barilla, Air France and Fiat. She recently collaborated with the fashion world, working with Fendi, Prada, Hermès and Marella.
