On Saturday 30 November 2019 at 5 pm, Galleria Studio Cenacchi, in the heart of Bologna, opens Bologna, from the Outskirts to the City Centre, an exhibition of 25 recent works by Maurizio Tangerini. Curated by Jacopo Cenacchi, with a critical essay by Professor Vittorio Baglieri, the exhibition runs until 11 January 2020.

Dedicated entirely to Bologna, the exhibition brings together recent oil paintings, acrylics and watercolours by Maurizio Tangerini. Cities have long been central to his work, but none has the same hold on his imagination as Bologna. Born in Cento, Tangerini has made the city his adopted home and continues to return to it in his painting with a deep sense of attachment.

His Bologna is found in glimpses of everyday life: a street corner, a portico, people going about their day. Nothing is staged. Familiar gestures and ordinary moments give the paintings a sense of life as it is actually lived. Sometimes a single detail — a street lamp, a sign or a bus — is enough to make a place instantly recognisable.

Tangerini is equally at ease with acrylic, oil, tar and watercolour. His watercolours are particularly immediate and direct, drawing the viewer straight into the scene. The city unfolds as a kind of natural stage, populated by people caught in the flow of daily life.

The outskirts tell a different story. Here we find fragments of abandoned buildings and stretches of tarmac disappearing into the distance beneath an unbroken white line. People are absent. So are the cars, yet their absence makes it easy to imagine them rushing past or forming long queues along these empty roads.

Tangerini does not turn these peripheral landscapes into a moral judgement on urban decay. Instead, he brings them within his portrait of Bologna as a whole: the city cannot be separated from its outskirts. His paintings hold together affection for the place he has made his own and an acute awareness of the alienation and desolation that can still be found at its edges.

Maurizio Tangerini
Bologna, dalle periferie al centro
Curated by Jacopo Cenacchi

30 November 2019 > 11 January 2020
Critical text by Prof. Vittorio Baglieri
Events: Saturday 7, Saturday 14 and Saturday 21 December, 4:30–6:30 pm the artist will paint watercolours live, illustrating his technique to visitors

GALLERIA STUDIO CENACCHI
Via Santo Stefano 63
40125 Bologna

OPENING HOURS
Tuesday–Saturday: 4:30–7:30 pm
Monday: by appointment
Sunday: closed