Upstate Diary: 'LUCIO POZZI: qui dentro/in here' at Magazzino

Entering Lucio Pozzi: qui dentro/in here, a distilled retrospective coinciding with the artist’s 90th birthday, feels a bit like stepping inside his head and perusing the enigmatic contents of its interior walls. Pozzi, who left Italy for New York in 1962 and quickly fell in with the downtown avant-garde, developed the reputation as an artist and writer allergic to easy categorization; his refusal to pick a lane was sometimes celebrated, sometimes deprecated. Though his life’s work comprises photography, performance and sculpture as well as abstract and figurative painting, in here, organized by guest curator David Ebony in collaboration with Magazzino artistic director Paola Mura, foregrounds Pozzi’s minimalistic abstractions made since the early ‘60s. The 28 items are scattered high and low, regardless of chronology, around a single cathedral-like space, immersing the audience in his playful yet austere vision.

In his “Relocation” wall sculptures, like Kalibo (1991) and Checkpoint (2017), the artist investigates how one rectangular form can be cut apart, reassembled and colorized to a dynamic effect. The angular Key (2024) — constructed of two triangular appendages reaching out from a trapezoidal body and painted in a wash of dark and electric blue, save for a thin segment of searing orange across its midriff — mesmerizes with intermingling zones of light and shadow. Then there are his “Dualism” paintings, which make much of inconspicuous formal juxtapositions. VLHR Level (2000) consists of small, cubical panels placed side by side and painted the deep blue of a night sky. From afar, they appear identical; but one is painted with vertical brushstrokes and the other with horizontal strokes, causing each to suggest a distinct quality of empty space when scrutinized.

Less subtle are the two 11 by 10-foot paintings, Open Gates of Spring (2023) and Visitation (2023-34), in which Pozzi balances opposing forces of geometry and lyricism using his signature colors: red, blue, yellow and green. On the other hand, the three small, quiet landscapes in watercolor stand out as strategic counterpoints. Against the backdrop of his more challenging abstractions, these summery views of pastoral fields and waterside meadows are especially warming. Pozzi admitted to having previously dismissed watercolor as a “hobby,” a meditative exercise separate from his serious research, but the trio rounds out the exhibition with demure brilliance. Moreover, they affirm that as Pozzi begins his tenth decade on the planet, his democratic attitude toward contemporary art endures.
—Matt Moment