ActionReaction — Pippo Lionni — DUTKO / Ile St. Louis Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: March 17 → April 28, 2018

Pippo Lionni was born in New York in 1954. This multifaceted artist, graphic designer, painter, and designer started out by putting his words into pictograms, expressive yet universal outline drawings. He returned to painting in 2008, and it was in 2016 that he started working on his ActionReaction series, chosen by Jean-Jacques Dutko for Lionni’s first showing in the gallery.

Each painting is created respecting the same ritual. Bouncing to the beat of contemporary music, spatula and lacquer in hand, the artist glides across a large canvas in synch with the rhythm of the music, spilling his feelings onto the canvas.

Pippo Lionni’s philosophy becomes crystal clear during his timed performances with the ActionReaction band.* The highly choreographed and practically chemical connection between Pippo and the music is unique. The artist enters a sort of trance, body and mind caught up with the drama poised to happen. Not a single word is uttered, no oratory artifice, but a magnificent language that sharply contrasts with what is generally spoken, expressed by the slapping of the spatula on the canvas, the music, and the symbolic and even cabalistic images that he crafts.

The artist divides his time between his three studios (Paris, Italy, and Sweden). Furthermore, he titles his works by year, month, and day of their creation, followed by the latitude and the longitude of the place of creation.

Pippo Lionni studied philosophy and mathematics at Portland State University and at New York University. His paintings have had numerous showings in French galleries and elsewhere in the world, notably at the Brownstone Foundation in Paris in 2001, at the Westin House in Gustavsberg, Sweden in 2014, at the Casa dell’Ambiente in Sienna, Italy in 2015, and more recently, in 2016, at the P! Gallery in New York City.

*Sergio Corbini, Stefano Franceschini, Silvia Bolognese