Santiago Cucullu: XXIII
May 21st – July 2nd, 2022
Photo credit: Daniel McCullough
Photo credit: Daniel McCullough
Photo credit: Daniel McCullough
Photo credit: Daniel McCullough
XXIII, 2021
Watercolor and ink on canvas
10 x 8 inches
Photo credit: Daniel McCullough
Mussolini Helvetica Bus Stop, 2020
Ink on canvas
10 x 8 inches
Photo credit: Daniel McCullough
Upside Down Bowl, Vase & Flowers, 2022
Pumice gel, acrylic, and ink on canvas
14 x 11 inches
Modern European Village Music, 2021
Watercolor and ink on canvas
15 x 12 inches (framed)
Photo credit: Daniel McCullough
Red Right Angle, 2021
Acrylic and ink on canvas
11 x 9 inches (framed)
Photo credit: Daniel McCullough
Superior Technique, 2021
Ink and acrylic on canvas
14 x 11 inches
XXIII: Santiago Cucullu
Please join us on Saturday, May 21st from 5-8PM for the opening reception of XXIII. XXIII will be the second solo exhibition of Santiago Cucullu at The Alice Wilds and will be on view through July 2nd, 2022.
The title of this exhibition comes from a small painting that announces “The roman numeral 23.” For some viewers the Roman numeration, XXIII, appears immediately, while others, see something else entirely. The exhibition is made up of paintings and drawings Cucullu has made over the last two years that delineate different ways of seeing and thinking. They follow a call and response between written language and abstract shapes, often on the verge of toppling over. The language is sourced from bits and pieces of whatever would be playing in the background of his studio, said in passing, or found in a long-forgotten notebook.
Cucullu writes, “I found that when taken out of context and placed in proximity to abstraction and simple renderings of unsteady shelving, these overheard comments form an alternate reading. In their way, the Chicha-inspired letter paintings nod toward the possibility that ‘abstract planes of color are vividly anti-materialistic and powerfully unstable’.”[1]
Argentinean-born Santiago Cucullu creates multi-media works, spatially unified installations, wall-sized murals, sculptures, and vibrant paintings on paper. Cucullu emphasizes the subtleties of intuitive pacing and spatial orientation by creating works using a duality of materials and appropriation to indicate that an exhibition space can act to trigger memories and experiences that we may encounter as rarified moments.
Reflecting quotidian familiarity, the works act to displace and highlight frictions and narratives that we form to survive. Often Cucullu’s works disrupt ideas of a uniformed reality by displacing representations of culture onto one another; these representations stand in for the artist and ask the viewer to adopt their nuances onto their own experiences.
Cucullu has exhibited at national and international institutions including the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; MOMA, New York, The Walker Art Center; and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles among others. A longtime resident of Wisconsin, he now splits his time between Milwaukee and Kansas City where he is currently the William T. Kemper Visiting Artist at the Kansas City Art Institute.
