Press release
November 2004
Valerio ADAMI
« Préludes et Après-ludes »
october 28 – december 31, 2004

After more than 10 years of absence in Paris, Valerio Adami comes back with «Préludes and Après-ludes» («Preludes and Post-ludes »), an exhibition of recent paintings and drawings, which marks the beginning of his new collaboration with Galerie Daniel Templon. Painted between 2001 and 2004, his new works are haunted by couples – everyday life couples, or couples laready settled by history and myths. Their duality always seems unresolved and infuses the paintings with an uncanny sense of loneliness and melancholy. Like in musical variations, Adami explores the passing of time and the fragility of human condition: empty hotel rooms, a crying Hamlet, melancholy angels, vanities…
xplicitly present in «The Painter (the memory teaching) » which represents the artist in his studio. A figure of «Memory» lures behind the painter’s head like a thought or a muse. The notion of memory – or rememberance – is also palpable through the display of drawings, which Adami defined once as «memories of the painting». The drawing process is indeed essential in Adami’s œuvre. Made in pencil, they result from a long process of sketching and erasing until only the essence of form remains. The drawings then serve as the foundations of the acrylic paintings.

Friends of many writers and philosophers, such as Carlos Fuentes, Italo Calvino or Jacques Derrida – to whom the exhibition is dedicated – Valerio Adami conceives his painting like a philosophical reflection over language and perception. As Edouard Glissant writes in the catalog, Adami’s œuvre has a «reach extended beyond the limits of his representation ». The sharp structure of his lines, which deconstruct and reconstruct his subject offer powerful means for poetic evocation, allegories, as well as philosophical interrogation on space and time.

Born in 1935 in Bologna, Valerio Adami is undeniabely one of Italy’s most internationnally reknowed painters. Trained at the Brera in Milan, he has worked in many cities including London, New York and Paris. Originally, an abstract artist, Adami gradually shifted to figuration and in the seventies became one of the main figures of « Figurative narration », a European extension of Pop art. Over the years he has had solo shows in many prestigious museums and biennales, including ICA London, Venice Biennial, Documenta III in Kassel, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and museums of Caracas, Ulm, Hambourg, Bordeaux, Marseille, Charleroi, Mexico, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Siena, Venice, Aix-en-Provence, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Madison Art Center, Wisconsin, the Palazzo Reale in Milan, IVAM Valencia etc. In 2004, the Frissiras museum in Athens organized a large retrospective.

Hours: Monday – Saturday 10 am – 7 pm
Adresse : 30 rue Beaubourg F- 75003 PARIS (in courtyard) Web site : www.danieltemplon.com Press contact : Anne-Claudie Coric (+33 1 42 72 14 10 or info@danieltemplon.com)

Upcoming exhibitions:
January 15 – February 26 2005 : Yayoi KUSAMA
March 5 – April 15, 2005 : Anthony CARO