Selected Articles and Reviews

“Opere intime, visioni ravvicinate”

Monsignore Timothy Verdon, Direttore Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Firenze 2018

Durante una visita notturna allo studio di Michelangelo negli anni cinquanta del XVI secolo, a Roma, Giorgio Vasari vide lo scultore mentre lavorava nel buio, al lume di una sola candela attaccata al copricapo. Michelangelo era anziano e l’opera a cui lavorava – la Pietà oggi a Firenze, destinata per la tomba dell’artista e contenente il suo autoritratto – era così intima che forse credeva di poterla scolpire senza vedere più dei pochi centimetri volta per volta illuminati dalla candela.

Il presente libro invita a un’esperienza analoga grazie alle fotografie di Angelo Garoglio offrenti visioni ravvicinate sia della Pietà fiorentina che di quella cominciata subito dopo questa, la Pietà detta Rondanini conservata a Milano. Nelle foto di Garoglio emergono in modo del tutto inedito sia la tecnica di Michelangelo che l’impeto interiore che lo guidava in queste sue ultime sculture. Lo straordinario saggio fotografico di Garoglio è infatti la prima ragione d’essere del volume. (Read More)

"Lumen and Lux" by Pino Mantovani 2014

From Silvio Fuso and Matteo Piccolo to Maria Fratelli and Giovanni Romano, all those who have dealt with Angelo Garoglio's photography dedicated to Medardo Rosso's sculpture (experience started in 2008 for Civica d’Arte Moderna, Milan, and continued in 2012, with “Disegni di luce” at Cà Pesaro in Venice - and that will not end soon: this Turin-based exhibition will be followed by one held at Ricci Oddi in Piacenza) agree on the fact that, in such case, photography establishes a relationship with sculpture that is not focused on depiction, memory and documentation, but is about poetic correspondence and in-depth analysis, as long as it is not deemed as a mere explanatory caption but rather a provocation, using new tools and renewed sensitivity, for highlighting further features, meanings and values. And, moreover, it was right Medardo Rosso who had interpreted the understanding of art both as a compromise and as a compromising relaunch. His curious collections mixing originals and copies, copies of copies and "original copies" are proof of this; repetition through variations of his own works, which are never reproduced mechanically but always undergo critically active interpretation and bear an even aggressive personal mark; the use of photography for orienting, putting into relation, and stimulating sculpturally processed shapes, to be fully (re)experienced beyond the material statement: as art, to him, was vital current, perpetuation and expansion of emotions through a work of art. (Read More)

(Italian Text here)

"Angelo Garoglio", by Dr. Slavka Sverakova
January 22, 2013

Born 1951 in Milan, Garoglio lives in Turin, where he met and collaborated with Mutus Liber. In 1986, Brian Kennedy invited them all to Northern Ireland and Danny McCarthy arranged for their work to be seen in Cork. Garoglio contributed later, in 1991, to the event organized by Brian Connolly, Brian Kennedy and Alastair MacLennan at Londonderry, and again, with Mutus Liber, in 1995 to the exhibition held in the spaces of Catalyst Arts, Belfast.

At that time, I linked his work to Brunelleschi's structural rationalism, in principle a strategy of making the surface to reflect how the forms were arrived at, how they were made... (Read More)

"Angelo Garoglio and Medardo Rosso", by Giovanni Romano
2012

Rosso took very careful photo shots of his own works, fixing an ideal vantage point to be privileged above all others, and cutting and reassembling his prints in such a way as to emphasize the dynamic effect of his shots. Angelo Garoglio has taken part in a similar operation with an opposite goal: he has approached the sculptures by transcending the limits the master had foreseen, at the risk of making certain details unrecognizable, and has shattered the taboo of "not circling round" the works... (Read More)

(Italian Translation here)

"Per Angelo Garoglio", by Giovanni Romano
2006

Segno
"Nous étions l'illusion qu'on nomme souvenir", si può usare questo verso di Yves Bonnefois per provare ad avvicinarci ai disegni di Angelo Garoglio. Il significato è diffìcile e sfuggente (l'illusoria verità di un ricordo usurato), ma proprio in questo ritrarsi dall'evidenza razionale, dalla facile decifrabilità, si riconosce il parallelismo tra i pittore e il poeta. Garoglio spiega a parole che i suoi disegni sono ispirati al mondo naturale (le mani, i corpi, le foglie), ma chi guarda riconosce solo tracce residuali, che non si riconducono a un' immagine organica: sono scorie di una forma annullatasi nel tempo, bruciata da una sovraesposizione luminosa che abbaglia e rende incapaci di riconoscere la figura originaria... (Read More)

(German Translation here)

"Les 'pierres'", by Yves Bonnefoy
2003

J'ai intìtulé " Une pierre " de nombreux poèmes dispersés dans mes livres de poesie depuis Pierre écrite, un petit recueil de grand format et de tirage très limité que j'ai publié en 1958 à la galerie Maeght à Paris avec, pour les exemplaires de tête, des " ardoises " originales de Raoul Ubac. Mon ami appliquait de la couleur sur des éclats d'ardoise, une pierre pour laquelle il avait grande affection et qui fut le matériau principal de ses sculptures, puis il pressait ces fragments sur des feuilles, cela donnait ces magnifiques empreintes qui me font aimer ce livre, mon premier avec un artiste... (Read More)

(Italian Translation here)

"Ansprache anlässlich der Vernissage "Come Albero" von Angelo Garoglio", by Marianne Mittelholzer Leuenberger
November 2, 2001

Meine Damen und Herren
Hegel (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1770 - 1831) hat mit Nachdruck darauf hingewiesen, dass wir es in der Kunst "mit keinem bloss angenehmen oder nützlichen Spielwerk, sondern mit einer Entfaltung der Wahrheit" zu tun haben. Ein Kunstwerk lässt sich nicht isoliert betrachten. Es muss immer in Zusammenhang mit der Welt gesehen werden. Angelo Garoglios Werke sind in der Tat nicht nur einfach schön, sondern vermögen, dass der Betrachter die Welt, das Leben plötzlich ganz anders wahr nimmt... (Read More)

"Angelo Garoglio - Catalyst Art" , by Dr. Slavka Sverakova
November 6, 1995

The afternoon light hurried towards the dusk, the windows allowed it in with avarice known to man only. Yet - the eye could recognize three shades of white, when Dougal McKenzie started painting a wall at right angle to that which housed Garoglio's work.

It constituted out of five elements, the stud wall into which an indented vertical was made, a painted triangle on the floor, a shape of a shadow of the wall at some time during the day, a coloured photograph of an explosion of light caused by photographing a photograph which was written, scribbled over, and then touched by strong light, and two blue drawings, presenting presences of absent body... (Read More)

Selected Articles and Reviews

“Opere intime, visioni ravvicinate”

Monsignore Timothy Verdon, Direttore Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Firenze 2018

"Lumen and Lux" by Pino Mantovani 2014

"Angelo Garoglio", by Dr. Slavka SverakovaJanuary 22, 2013

"Angelo Garoglio and Medardo Rosso", by Giovanni Romano2012

"Per Angelo Garoglio", by Giovanni Romano2006

"Les 'pierres'", by Yves Bonnefoy2003

"Ansprache anlässlich der Vernissage "Come Albero" von Angelo Garoglio", by Marianne Mittelholzer LeuenbergerNovember 2, 2001

"Angelo Garoglio - Catalyst Art" , by Dr. Slavka SverakovaNovember 6, 1995