'LUCIO POZZI: qui dentro/in here' at Magazzino, and 'I Was Here' at September Gallery.
LUCIO POZZI: qui dentro/in here at Magazzino Italian Art Museum. On view through June 23 in Cold Spring, NY.
Installation view of LUCIO POZZI: qui dentro/in here, Magazzino Italian Art, Cold Spring, NY. Courtesy Magazzino Italian Art Ph: Marco Anelli - Tommaso Sacconi. Rights Society (ARS).
Entering Lucio Pozzi: qui dentro/in here, a distilled retrospective coinciding with the artist’s 90th birthday, feels a bit like stepping inside his head and perusing the enigmatic contents of its interior walls. Pozzi, who left Italy for New York in 1962 and quickly fell in with the downtown avant-garde, developed the reputation as an artist and writer allergic to easy categorization; his refusal to pick a lane was sometimes celebrated, sometimes deprecated. Though his life’s work comprises photography, performance and sculpture as well as abstract and figurative painting, in here, organized by guest curator David Ebony in collaboration with Magazzino artistic director Paola Mura, foregrounds Pozzi’s minimalistic abstractions made since the early ‘60s. The 28 items are scattered high and low, regardless of chronology, around a single cathedral-like space, immersing the audience in his playful yet austere vision.
In his “Relocation” wall sculptures, like Kalibo (1991) and Checkpoint (2017), the artist investigates how one rectangular form can be cut apart, reassembled and colorized to a dynamic effect. The angular Key (2024) — constructed of two triangular appendages reaching out from a trapezoidal body and painted in a wash of dark and electric blue, save for a thin segment of searing orange across its midriff — mesmerizes with intermingling zones of light and shadow. Then there are his “Dualism” paintings, which make much of inconspicuous formal juxtapositions. VLHR Level (2000) consists of small, cubical panels placed side by side and painted the deep blue of a night sky. From afar, they appear identical; but one is painted with vertical brushstrokes and the other with horizontal strokes, causing each to suggest a distinct quality of empty space when scrutinized.
Installation view of LUCIO POZZI: qui dentro/in here, Magazzino Italian Art, Cold Spring, NY. Courtesy Magazzino Italian Art Ph: Marco Anelli - Tommaso Sacconi. Rights Society (ARS).
Less subtle are the two 11 by 10-foot paintings, Open Gates of Spring (2023) and Visitation (2023-34), in which Pozzi balances opposing forces of geometry and lyricism using his signature colors: red, blue, yellow and green. On the other hand, the three small, quiet landscapes in watercolor stand out as strategic counterpoints. Against the backdrop of his more challenging abstractions, these summery views of pastoral fields and waterside meadows are especially warming. Pozzi admitted to having previously dismissed watercolor as a “hobby,” a meditative exercise separate from his serious research, but the trio rounds out the exhibition with demure brilliance. Moreover, they affirm that as Pozzi begins his tenth decade on the planet, his democratic attitude toward contemporary art endures. —Matt Moment
I Was Here, September Gallery, Kinderhook, NY, through May 11, 2025
Installation view, I Was Here, September Gallery, 2025, showing works by Jen Simms. Photo by David Ebony.
The six artists in I Was Here are all engaged in a ratified form of weaving, sewing, and textile collage using mostly ordinary found materials: strips of fabric from thrift store clothing, and rough cords and chains, to delicate beaded strings and silk threads. The artists: Kesewa Aboah, kg, Emma Safir, Jen Simms, Odessa Straub, and Amas Verdâtre are united by an ability to achieve highly personalized visual statements with universal appeal. Organized by gallery director Kristen Dodge, the show has a special resonance for this venue, which is a renovated former knitting mill. Outstanding here, Odessa Straub’s sumptuous composition One is on a Horizontal Line (2020-24) features glittery red glass beads meticulously clustered near the center of a shimmering field made of pieces of shiny pink and red, unadorned nylon and cotton fabric. These relatively crudely stitched together panels contrast with the refined, labor-intensive application of the centralized beading, whose curvilinear shape suggests a beating heart or an otherworldly, centipede-like insect.
Installation view, I was here, September Gallery, 2025, showing works by kg (left) and Amas Verdâtre (right). Photo by Pierre Le Hors.
After extended viewing, works by the Polish-born artist known as kg deliver at times an emotional impact, and at others a potent dose of humor. The artist’s Swieltliste Drogi (2018), for example, is an elegiac image—literally funereal—composed of sticks woven into dyed linen with braided cords that hold the golden letters, Loving, from their father’s funereal wreath. It is a clearly heartfelt tribute to theirs or anyone’s beloved, departed parent. Equally stunning, but filled with humor, kg’s Oasis or What a Bunch of Assholes (2018), is a rectangular weaving of strands of beige material adorned with brown rose-shaped buttons. This rather coarse section frames a languorous gathering of Prussian blue threads arranged in a cluster at center. Since the artist offers a choice in the title, rather than an anus, I prefer to think of the blue mass as a refreshing watery oasis.
Issues of gender and identity abound in the exhibition, perhaps nowhere more vitally expressive than in Jen Simms’s portraits, each with an unexpected and imaginative use of found material and thrifted yarns. Displayed in pairs or rows along one wall, each of the dozen or so squarish compositions contains a face with a distinct character. Some heads are abstracted far beyond any recognizable human attributes. Yet, like all the artists in this unforgettable exhibition, Simms aims for an emotional intensity that is thoroughly humanistic. —David Ebony