From the Diocesan Museum of Cremona, on the afternoon of Thursday 9 May, “a prayer, a cry: God Save Matter”. An invocation coming from the architect Giorgio Palù who inaugurated his first solo exhibition of site-specific works and installations. «In that place imbued with spirituality which is the museum – declared Palù – I punctuated the journey with my works in dialogue with what is exhibited». A dialogue that “is a common thread” along which runs the history of spirituality embodied in a material to which the artist-architect gives shape, in 18 works plus 2 installations, playing with materials ranging from Botticino marble to wood, from stainless steel to plasma-worked iron, materials especially of an industrial nature, in an abstract key.
The inauguration of the exhibition, God Save Matter, which will be open to the public until June 2, was itself a hymn to the works of Palù from Cremona who designed the premises of the diocesan museum which opened in 2021. On the catwalk and on the staircase that opens, like a spiral, the visit to the museum unfolded the crowded presentation. «On a scale reminiscent of the Ascension, which moves between heaven and earth – explained Bishop Antonio Napolioni – we make a light stop». In what «it is a house of culture and art», as added Don Gianluca Gaiardi, responsible for cultural heritage for the diocese and director of the Museum, it was decided to continue the dialogue (already open with other exhibitions) with contemporary art which draws inspiration from the Cremonese context, from the city made of houses that guard the sacred. For this reason, during the inauguration, Bishop Napolioni gave the architect, as he had done to Mayor Gianluca Galimberti last May 2nd in Sant’Abbondio, the pastoral letter “To the heart of our city”. The text, born on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the construction of the Holy House in Sant’Abbondio, speaks of sacred architecture and light, one of the key elements of Palù’s works. «In these rooms my works lit up with light – declared the architect born in 1964 – in a museum that is steeped in spirituality». Matter “so flexible it managed to release energy and light», added the curator of the exhibition Ilaria Bignotti who had known Palù in 2020 not for his architectural works but for his artistic ones.
«Among the works that most represent me – has explained – there is a multimedia, sound and light installation designed together with Michelangelo (born Michele Zocca)» and originally created for the church of San Carlo in 2019. In the centre, as in a cameo, Christ crucified flooded with red and then blue light, in a succession of colors accompanied by music that becomes a cry of pain. The installation is located in the exhibition spaces intended for temporary exhibitions and is surrounded by large panels where resins and red colors reign supreme in abstract works, «because the abstract today stimulates the interlocutor’s mind more».
Along the rooms of the museum the Red Monolith stands alongside the Annunciation by Boccaccio Boccaccino, just as the Botticino stele pierced by iron recalls the ancient statue of San Sebastiano. More than one Crucifixion. The transparency of Christ nailed to the wood is tinged with red in Transparent J, which interfaces with the works exhibited in the seventh room, such as Christ in the olive garden by Battistello Caracciolo, the Crucifix by Scandolara Ravara, the oldest wooden sculpture in the Diocese of Cremona.
The large metal cross, worked in gold, placed in the room dedicated to crosses as well as With My Arms, which iconographically is an explicit homage to the late medieval crucifixes of the Arvedi-Buschini collection, is well placed. In the author’s intentions, it is “a spiritual journey that transcends and penetrates the depths of each one” through a “body to body” encounter with a material that shows all its brightness and along the way also its “breathability”, becoming a stimulus for reflection.
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