Max Pellegrini:

The veil and the fortress.

A voyage around metaphors 

of silence

APRIL 18 - MAY 15, 2014    

Endless figures of speech might be used to narrate the silence. The concept of sound absence has originated through time an incredibly rich series of linguistic images, often contradictory ones: silence is fragile as ice and impenetrable as rock, silence can go down as a curtain or raise as an embankment, breakable by a flow of words. Silence might be a thin veil around a mouth or an impervious fortress, destined to stop any form of communication. Literature and music, but also dance and painting have taken inspiration from these metaphors.

The veil and the fortress, the project realized by OGR in collaboration with Torino Spiritualità, wants to investigate the generative and creative forces behind it, looking at images, thoughts and movements invented to speak about what cannot be spoken about without denying it. Starting point and ideal background of the research is Max Pellegrini’s oeuvre, Turinese painter whose research began in the 60’s and developed in the following decades focusing on the relation between silence and fantasy, influenced by the partial deafness of the artist.

The big canvases by Pellegrini represent allegories and visions imbued with mysticism and spirituality, ascetic and silent dreams, where sound becomes painting and where hidden words become apparent only in the long titles of the works. The works are shown on mobile structures, moving as theatrical set always changing the space of Duomo –spiritual space per definition inside OGR– transforming it in a stage for multidisciplinary takes on silence: from theatrical meditation to experimentation on silence in contemporary music.

The synesthetic contaminations are presented here for the first time, The veil and the fortress will be the occasion to listen to silence as thematized in philosophy, theology and antropology, thanks to public meetings with experts, the experience of lack of words through yoga sessions –in its different schools and traditions– and meditation for adults and children. Visitors are invited to enter a contemplative space, to embark in a mystical and metaphorical voyage between words and their negation.