S.M.55 G.P. (XIII): front image on brown-purple vertical with nickel stripeand down-bar

A distinctively different approach is taken by the artist Gianni Piacentino, who
has always explored the relationship between art and design. He developed a passion for mechanical objects, on which he focuses particular aesthetic attention,
through a meeting with a motorcycle restorer. It was in 1969 that he began to
work on the idea of a two or threewheeled vehicles and to produce decorations with bandings, like motorcycle fuel tanks of the 1920s and ’30s, followed by
aerodynamic forms. He also learned to construct works with the correct mechanical
and technological approach. His works look like the results of a process of
industrial production where the artist is present only in the choice of how to asassemble of already prepared materials. In the case of the work exhibited here, Piacentino created the drawing of an aeroplane, while the frame, made up of parts
of a propeller, delimits the canvas. The artist’s attention is focused on cold
materials in a constant dialectic relationship with industry and design. (Transl. by Paul Metcalfe per Scriptum, Roma)