Memoria

Memoria is the solo exhibition with artworks by Michele Dolz opening at Palazzo Viani Dugnani, Via Ruga 44.

The exhibition, curated by Elena Pontiggia, investigates the theme of “memory,” understood as an action of the mind, from which Dolz’s conceptual work draws inspiration and is nurtured, particularly that gravitating around the theme of landscape. Dolz’s landscapes are not inhabited by man, but presuppose him. Seeing them one understands that man has measured them, traversed them, cultivated them with his labor, sowing them, plowing them and reaping their fruits. The lines that cross the ground in his paintings (and infuse a subtle rhythm in a textural drafting capable of reknitting a dialogue with the informal) are the signs of human presence. Dolz does not paint real landscapes, but archetypes of the earth and the sky that laps it. In them the artist suggests a different notion of time, and thus of existence. Moreover, his colors, which favor ranges of ochres or mineral whites, teach us that everything is pervaded by light, even what seems archaic and fossilized.

The exhibition is completed with Intervallo, the title the artist has given to his latest cycle of photographs. Dolz,” Elena Pontiggia reminds us in the catalog essay, “searches on stalls, in disused bookstores, in the stores of the troubleshooters (all places far from the mainstream of fashion photography) and finds images of men and women who lived in an unspecified era of a not too distant past, showing them to us in all their naturalness. Together these figures, joined by a few spots or brushstrokes, form an almost pictorial mosaic. Their faces, their expressions, and the indefinite and sober color of the photographs arouse a singular suggestion and also prompt us to a consideration regarding death, which is sometimes colored with hope, since memory is not only evocation of the past, but also foreboding of the future.

MICHELE DOLZ
Born in Castellón (Spain) in 1954 and moved to Italy in 1976. He lives and works in Milan. He is a professor of Art History and author of numerous books and articles.
A pupil of Spanish painter Salvador Pérez, he has developed a painting style that is both meditative and highly expressive. But he does not disdain photography, although he always uses it as part of other works. He has held numerous exhibitions in Italy, Spain, Switzerland, England and the United States.
Chiara Canali, Elena Pontiggia, Eneas Capalbo, Giorgio Seveso, Roberto Borghi, Maurizio Cecchetti, Andrea Beolchi, Davide Coltro, Sebastiano Grasso, Joan Feliu and others have written about him.