SUPPORTICO LOPEZ

Supportico Lopez is very glad to present the third exhibition at the gallery of the avant-garde poet and artist Henri Chopin.

“Graphpoemachines” takes his name from a project Henri Chopin realized in 2005-2006 in Verona, under the auspices of Francesco Conz.

Conz invited Chopin several times to Verona, in particular for a residence in 1987, during which his piano mute was made: ‘Francesco left me a big space to work, an almost new piano, which I had to wrap up to make a mute and blind ballerina… like a god with small feet. And because I was fed up always listening to the same concert wherever I went, as if I were to play and finding it all more artificial than a firework with great pleasure I shut the mouth of a piano which played Chopin without pause”.

If such is the genesis of the piano shown in this exhibition, Chopin describes his other three-dimensional pieces as follows: ‘My sculptures, which are not sculptures, are a neo-alphabet created using second hand electro-acoustic devices or those which have been overtaken by technology which evolves with the passage of time. But old radio sets just like old magnetic tape recorders even if they are tired for me are not to be thrown away’.

These curious anthropomorphic totems – sort of self-portraits of the artist in his last years – were made with old instruments to which Chopin had also remained faithful, in both his sound works and public performances.

In 1983 Francesco Conz met Chopin for the first time and few years later they worked together on their first editorial project. During a visit at Leigh-on-Sea, in the south of England, when Jean, Chopin’s wife was still alive, they started to plan To ray the rays, a nine pages book in 5 different colors, silk screen printed by hand on fabric in large format. Chopin followed the production of the edition very closely, personally controlling the quality of the printing, the material, the juxtaposition of colors and their intensity. Conz considered To ray the rays as a milestone in his career as publisher.

This exhibition of Henri Chopin is the first of many that will present, discover and explore the amazing archive left by Francesco Conz, that Supportico Lopez is glad to represent exclusively since. More than three thousands items between artworks, documents, editions and personal belongings by more than one hundred artists, collected and catalyzed by Francesco Conz over the course of more than 30 years.