MATtam 58
Manto Arte Temporanea | Temporary Art Manto
short exhibitions in found spaces
Tinelli di Palazzo Te | Mantova
Paolo Marcolongo
Metamorfosi del soffio
Sunday December 11th 2022
only between 10:30 AM and 1:00 PM
Artist characterized by a multifaceted inspiration, Paolo Marcolongo is one of the most significant representatives of the Paduan Goldsmith School and here he presents the artistic production of recent years, expressed both in jewelry and in glass sculptures. In his jewels the complexities of the sculptural, artistic and aesthetic references that characterize his creative evolution find a compendium and a perfect balance. Nature blossoms in its sensuality and its dangerousness, on the one hand expressed by precious metals at times pungent, sharp and thorny, on the other through the softness of glass that explodes in an ancestral, almost archetypal dialogue between color, transparency, weight and shape. In the small sculptures, the conceptual play and the architectural interlocking of colors, weights and shapes prevail. Delicate scaffoldings design and frame the space in minimalistic visions in which the glass is often contaminated by rust and iron, laterally, as a counterbalance to the void.
Born in Padua in 1956, Paolo Marcolongo he attended the "Pietro Selvatico" Art School, and then studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice. From 1984 to 1996 he taught plastic arts at the "Pietro Selvatico" school, and since 1996 he has taught the same subject at the state school of art "Amedeo Modigliani" in Padua. From 1996 to 1998 he was curator of "Pd 362", an art gallery of contemporary jewels in Padua. From 1998 to 2005 he was curator of the "Galleria Marcolongo" of Applied Arts in Padua. Since then he has worked as a curator and artist curating several exhibitions and participating in numerous international ventures. In 2015 he won the Bayerischer Staatspreis in Munich.
"The transformative exploration acts as a counterpoint to the compositional intentionality, renewing the amazement of the completed form." Donata Negrini