On Saturday 30 November 2024 at 5 pm, Galleria Studio Cenacchi, Via Santo Stefano 63, Bologna, opens Impronte, a solo exhibition by Maurizio Tangerini.

Curated by Jacopo Cenacchi, the exhibition brings together 15 works in different formats, 14 of which are being shown for the first time.

In these new paintings, Tangerini develops themes that have shaped his work over the past three years. He continues to explore our relationship with the places we inhabit and the traces we leave behind. Using a limited palette and swift brushstrokes, he suggests the outlines of flyovers, cars, factories and pylons. The landscapes feel suspended and strangely empty. Human figures are nowhere to be seen, yet their presence is unmistakable in the structures they have built, many of them abandoned or still unfinished.

The atmosphere recalls certain scenes from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road: industrial ruins, stretches of open land that seem to bear the traces of a recent but not final disappearance, and deserted building sites.

This latest phase in Tangerini’s painting is defined by a careful stripping away of clearly recognisable figurative elements, replaced by a looser, more contemporary visual language.

The precise architectural lines that once defined his views of Bologna — his adopted city — and other historic cities have disappeared. Instead, we are left looking at paintings whose forms remain only partially defined. We do not know where these places are, and ultimately it does not matter.

What matters is the invitation to look inwards. Tangerini leaves each viewer free to respond to the many associations these works evoke and to find those that resonate most closely with their own experience and sensibility.

It marks a clear departure from his earlier work, and reflects his continuing commitment to renewing his painting.