On Saturday 16 March at 6 pm, Studio Cenacchi, Via Santo Stefano 63, Bologna, opens Kido, His Batik, His Art.

The exhibition celebrates a unique artist and looks back over fifty years of an extraordinarily varied career. Kido created clothes for some of Italy’s leading fashion designers and worked extensively in theatre, directing productions and designing sets and costumes for countless performances. His visual art is equally wide-ranging, from abstract batiks and exquisitely detailed figurative works, including his Madonnas, to ceramics and his distinctive Bambolone, created both in batik and as padded fabric sculptures.

Kido made batik — the ancient Indonesian art of decorating fabric — his preferred medium, drawn to the creative freedom it offered. He developed a highly personal approach to the technique, exploiting the cracks that form as the wax dries to produce unexpected effects. He also introduced additional processes, working over silk that had already been dyed using batik.

By combining traditional batik with his own painting techniques, Kido created subtle layers and variations of colour that give his works an unusual sense of depth and richness. The results were remarkable at the time and remain distinctive today, even when compared with the Eastern traditions from which batik originated.

Carlo Lucarelli writes:

“Some people possess the extraordinary gift of creating connections. Between things, situations, ideas and materials, but above all between people. […] Technique, passion and, most of all, irony — together with that touch of madness that makes it possible to have fun even through the most exhausting work. Then there is the desire to experiment and, above all, the ability to create something beautiful, personal and new every time. Look at any work by Kido and you will find all of these things there.”

Kido Emiliani
Kido: il suo Batik, la sua Arte
Curated by Massimo Golfieri and Lorenzo Scarpellini

16 March > 24 April 2019
Catalogue edited by Concetta Nasone e  Massimo Golfieri; with a text by Carlo Lucarelli.

GALLERIA STUDIO CENACCHI
Via Santo Stefano 63
40125 Bologna

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