CENZO COCCA “Mascherzi?”
Solo exhibition
From July 21 to July 27 -Floréal Belleville, 75020-Paris
From July 30 to August 5 – Galerie Jacques Lévy, 75003-Paris
Presented by the Association Limen_Art
Curated by: Fabrizia Atzei
Contact limen.Art75@gmail.com
VERNISSAGE
Friday July 21 starting from 6 pm
The Limen_Art association is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition in France of Fiber Art artist Cenzo Cocca. The exhibition will present some twenty works, including sewn portraits, a work that the artist has been developing since 2016, and masks made in 2023. In this latest series, Cenzo condenses in a single medium all the research he has developed over the last seven years; a profound and poetic analysis of life, the horizon of time, being and perception.
“Mascherzi?” explores and develops the theme of memory, intended in all its semantic and anthropological resonance, and how it affects the perception of our “reality”.
Memory, a concept rooted in the human being, is deposited in the places we inhabit and in other places takes its place in our minds. It “comes like a little rope from the sky” that brings us back to reality, to our self that emerges from the incessant flow of memories and the selection that escapes forgetfulness. The artist proposes a journey, a sensorial journey through the architecture of memory, of the consciousness of the world and of the self, where the threads have the colours of childhood, the vocabulary the poetics of everyday life and the smell of his beloved South, rich in proud traditions and wise memories. The viewer finds himself walking on an abstract line of time and growth. Sewing becomes a bridge between the conscious and the unconscious, a porous interstice that binds all the layers of an existence and makes space between the simplicity of words, the intricacy of thought and the power of image.
Directly influenced by studies in art and neuroscience, on vision, memory and perception, the artist has channelled his latest research into the model of the mask, a device that conceals, reveals and protects. This highly allegorical and symbolic object allows him to play with reality and its cultural meanings, but also to weave intimate and complex narratives about learning, mental processes, representation and identity. However, it is equally true that the mask is also a game of dissimulation that offers us a subjective glimpse of reality. Man familiarises himself with faces, features and looks, making them the mirror of experience and soul, he trusts his senses and adapts to shared memories, thus building the totem of his identity. But beyond impressions, the ‘person’ remains an illusion. Cenzo unveils the artifice of man and the artifice of memory, in a complex but ironic journey that leads us to say “MASCHERZI?”.
In this game of analogies and contradictions, the mask becomes, by contrast, a metaphor of experience and the fetish of an invisible reality. Some works echo the Sardinian tradition, others adopt animal characteristics, in a collage of organic superimpositions and substitutions that reveal the flaws of being and the paradoxes of culture.
This range of ‘characters’ is accompanied by another form of memory, portraits, whose faces evoke deep identities that preserve the thin thread binding time and memory. The artist works on the front and back of paper, without preference or hierarchy, combining collage, thread, poetry, concepts and memories. The result is a body of works somewhere between abstraction and figuration that offer themselves to a layered reading. Every detail sends out signals that are personally processed by each of us and evoke latent stories and memories. The works become changeable, rich in emotion, alive, like a childhood diary that spans a lifetime.
In this place of artistic junction and synaesthesia that is “Mascherzi?”, where thread, word and character converge, intertwine and above all coexist, the mask is confirmed as a symbol of transition and transformation. It leads us to rethink reality and ourselves, and it is on this rite of passage, this space suspended towards an ‘elsewhere’, that Cenzo’s work is set. We are in the midst of chosen memories and memories under construction and in that liminal place between the portrait and the mask: man.
Andrea Cocca, aka Cenzo, was born in 1994 in Ghilarza, Sardinia.
He currently lives and works in Olmedo.
He began his artistic journey in 2015, entering the Fashion Image Institute of Giuseppe Pinu in Nuoro. During his fashion studies, he approached the art world as a self-taught artist and began to develop a free and intimate language that combines contemporary art and tailoring. His artistic process is characterised by the use of simple techniques and everyday materials, such as needles, thread, sheets, and playing cards, with which he gives life to an allegorical universe made up of tales and novellas in which the spectator finds and rediscovers himself.
His work has been the exhibited in several solo shows. The most recent include ‘Colmando il vuoto aprendo gli occhi’, curated by Barbara Pavan and Susanna Cati, Perugia, Scd Art Studio; ‘Segnali di vita’, curated by Chiara Manca, MANCASPAZIO, Nuoro. He has also taken part in recent group exhibitions and fairs, including ‘APPUNTI SU QUESTO TEMPO’, curated by Barbara Pavan, Casermarcheologica, San Sepolcro; FIBERSTORMING, a project dedicated to contemporary fibre art, promoted by ArteMorbida Textile Arts, curated by Barbara Pavan; BERGAMO ARTE FIERA, ArteMorbida space, as part of XS PROJECT, curated by Barbara Pavan; ROMA ARTE IN NUVOLA, in Rome Palazzo La Nuvola di Fuksas, with the MANCASPAZIO gallery, Nuoro. His works have been included in several group exhibitions at museums such as the Pinacoteca Nazionale Sassari, the M.A.S.E Museum in Alghero and MURATS, Museo Unico Regionale dell’Arte Tessile Sarda in Samugheo.
