Umberto Ciceri

This exhibition aims at defining in all-encompassing, theorical terms a large part of Umberto Ciceri’s body of work, specifically the part stemming from his research on abstract matrixes. Ciceri’s work often superimposes and references a series of historical experiences connected to the avantgarde and the neo-avantgarde, which are put in dialogue with digital techniques of image manipulation and algorithmic computation, that are clearly contemporary.
In Ciceri’s artwork, we can find an interest towards elements of a constructivist and kinetic nature – the artist himself reminds us of the importance of Naum Gabo’s 1920 Realistic Manifesto in the development of his research – but also towards analytical elements, which place his research more in a line of continuity with movements of a conceptual nature, such as New Painting, as Filiberto Menna defined it in 1973. In fact, Ciceri’s work is situated within “a territory that exasperates the relationship between surface and representation”;1 it represents itself and its own making by following an aniconic line, focused on linguistic, scientific and perceptual aspects, without leaving any leeway, and at the same leaving a lot of room for different meanings and interpretations, which are, however, never symbolic in nature. The artwork is thus at the centre of a proper language, built around perception and the functioning and limits of our eyes.
The exhibition at the MA*GA Museum, La forma del ritmo (The Shape of Rhythm), is the first chance to reflect and analyse this practice within the space of a museum. There are several distinct layers to analysing Ciceri’s work, which derive from his interest – both on a physical and scientific level – in the workings of light and colour perception, as well as eye and sight behaviour.