The Cris Contini Contemporary London gallery presents Tuscan artist Gioni David Parra’s solo exhibition ‘From Lunae to Stele’ on display from June 15 to July 28, 2024, at the Piagnaro Castle, Pontremoli, MS, Italy. The project, organised in collaboration with the Municipality of Pontremoli, the Piagnaro Castle (the former seat of the Museum of the Stele Statues), and the Cultural Association Art Promoter, includes ten works, among which a new site-specific installation is located inside the castle tower. Pontremoli, the ancient land of Luni crossed by the Via Francigena, was often defended in the past by its warriors considered ‘tutelary deities’, whose testimony is preserved in the castle with large monoliths, on which men and women are sculpted in low relief: the Stele Statues.
A leading figure in contemporary Italian sculpture with a strong sense of material and colour, Gioni David Parra works with stone, predominantly marble. In his creations, defined as Bladelight (blades of light), the marble, worked and translated into sharp sculptural elements, loses body and weight to acquire symbolic lightness thanks to the suspended and base installations. Following the cornerstones of sculpture: the full and the empty, the geometric and the indefinite, the whole and the broken, the artist emphasises the topical features by using gold leaf, which transcends its classical decorative meaning. In a presentation note for this exhibition, the artist declares: My connection to this context and this sculptural language is not only territorial, because my work certainly originates and matures under the Apuan Alps with its marble, but it is above all in the founding values that we find a closeness. Recognisable in the form of my Stelae with its stylized Bladelight like the daggers of the Lunar warriors. While certain cuts of mine (Nocube) evoke a strong femininity and maternity, to summarise, we can say that the protagonist is the sculpture of yesterday and today, between primitive and contemporary, rooted in certain universally common themes. We meet ideally on that threshold that unites us in enigma and mystery. A torment that has been perpetuated for centuries in the space of the sacred.
Jacopo Ferri, Mayor of the Municipality of Pontremoli, states: The title of this exhibition is in itself evocative. It is a rare example of an artistic combination of topology, meaning, and fascination. These are our mysterious and silent Stele Statues that have populated the territory for millennia, and the Stele conceived by the hand and mind of Gioni David Parra, with their sinuosity and their further bond with this land: marble. Shapes that stand out in time and space, rendered ethereal by their intrinsic meaning and beauty and by their essentiality. This is why, as Mayor of Pontremoli, I am honoured to be able to host in our Museum, the most visited in the Province of Massa Carrara, an exhibition of such value and such a shining example of skill, talent, and vision.
It is exciting to discover in the project of this Master of Marble, Daniele Crippa, President of Art Promoter and MUPA Portofino, continues, ’how the works chosen seem to have been created to be presented alongside these other sculptures created thousands of years earlier: art is present there. The sword that we see carved in the Stele Statue in defence of society has the same shape as the Blade of Light, that is the historical emblem of Gioni David Parra. Both emit shining messages.
In this context, Gioni David Parra’s work re-proposes in a modern key the deepest meaning of the Stelae, the representation of the spirit through the working of stone. Nicola Gallo, The Director of MUST, Pontremoli’s Museum of Stele Statues, concludes in his text.
In his essay in the catalogue, Luigi Codemo justifies the value of this exhibition: Even today, stele statues still bear witness to symbols and narratives that cross generations as introjected archetypes. And if Gioni David Parra’s works placed next to these ancient sculptures arouse such a strong sense of consonance, it can only be because of the reference to a semantic code that, however ancestral, is still shared.
First of all, the stelae share a hypnotic verticality: presences that parade themselves before you, joining earth and sky, revealing a telluric force that rises and binds to the celestial one. And everything happens according to the principle of maximum essentiality: the ancient sculptors to obtain maximum efficiency from rudimentary tools, and the contemporary artist to seek maximum synthesis through abstraction.
And indeed, abstraction is the principle that guides Parra’s formal research as he makes the laws of stone his own and delves into the grammar of ancient archetypes and symbols.
The three Bladelight stelae, the Blades of Light, with their triangular outline, recall an axial symbol, that is, the sword, the lightning bolt, the light that pierces the earth, marking the centre that moves and dominates the cosmos by remaining still, the pivot of the wheel, the motionless motor.
Luigi Codemo, Director of GASC, Gallery of Contemporary Sacred Art, Villa Clerici, Milan
On the occasion of the opening on June 15, 2024, from 6.30 p.m., the catalogue accompanying the exhibition will be presented: GIONI DAVID PARRA, Dalla Lunae alle Stele, De Ferrari Editore Genova
FROM LUNAE TO STELE | Gioni David Parra
Opening June 15, 2024, at 6:00 p.m.
Exhibition: 15 June–28 July 2024
Piagnaro Castle, Pontremoli, MS, Italy
Open to the public from 10.30 a.m. to 8 p.m. continuously.
Tickets: https://statuestele.org/visita/orari-e-biglietti/
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