Spatial Research 1962-1982
Federico Brook was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 1956 he moved to Italy, where he completed his studies at the Accademia di Belle Arti of Rome under the guide of Pericle Fazzini and Alessandro Monteleone. The influence of the spatialism research conducted by Lucio Fontana, who represented a reference point for the generation of Argentinean artists from the 30’s, leaded Brook to the study of the motion of celestial bodies.
The exhibition at the Galleria del Cembalo retraces the path of Brook in twenty years’ time, through the infinite variations of movement of the volumes and of the light in the space.
His artworks characterised by geometric, solid shapes has always been easily inserted in architecture and in the widest urban contests: some examples of large sculptures in public spaces are shown in photographs. In 1973 Rafael Alberti dedicated a poem to Brook’s sculptures, with these words: “Of a spinning space, subtle and transparent” surprising the observer “with the hushed noise of the spheres”.
The visit should start from the large work in stone and iron, presented to Venice Biennale in 1962; then, there is a series of sculptures in perspex and polimetacrylate, in which the steel geometric shapes turn inside transparent and bright surfaces, recalling a recurring infinity.
Light is the ruling element allowing these spatial mechanisms to be projected in the surrounding ambient in modular way. The physics laws overseeing those mechanisms combine nature and men’s work.
Through the proposed selection, the focus goes back to the 70’s, one of the richest periods of contemporary art, in which the research on kinetic art was virtual as well as real, expression of shapes, as well as lights, materializing in the matter.
Finally, the cloud shape, which became constant in Brook’s work, marks in the heavy steel and bronze a significant counterpoint to the mathematical rules governing the space. The cloud as metaphor of the ever changing and fleeting time, reflecting fragments of the surrounding space by its shiny surfaces. It’s a never-ending action: even the observer’s image looks like if it’s being absorbed by the carved matter.
“If we say that a cloud is a cloud, and a cloud is a cloud, following the well-known literary exorcism, it happens that already after the third repetition the cloud is something else, it becomes a metaphor of itself, bringing with itself shreds of unconsciousness” – these are the words of Luigi Malerba at the end of his essay dedicated to the artist.
1971
1973
