The exhibition—curated by Luca Lo Pinto and Andrea Viliani with Timotea Prini and organised in collaboration with the Archivio Emilio Prini—presents a big selection of works on paper, with a give attention to these linked to the seminal exhibitions “Gennaio ‘70 – comportamenti, progetti, mediazioni”¹ and “Merce Tipo Customary.”²

The artist made his debut in 1967 by participating within the “Arte Povera–Im Spazio” exhibition at Galleria La Bertesca in Genoa, which marked the beginning of the Arte Povera analysis and “motion.” From the next 12 months till the early Seventies, he took half in a number of the most vital worldwide exhibitions of the time (together with “Op Losse Schroeven,” “Dwell In Your Head: When Attitudes Change into Type” and “Konzeption/Conception,” “1969; Data,” “1970; Contemporanea, 1973–74),” after which he decreased his exhibition exercise to a minimal. The preliminary core of his manufacturing revolved round a restricted set of concepts and works on which Prini continued to intervene till his dying, remodeling and modifying these typically with minimal however important gestures. A lot of the initiatives, though conceived in his early years, had been solely exhibited at a later stage (a scomparsa parziale) whereas others remained hypotheses on paper (a scomparsa totale).

Round 1969, Prini started investigating technological units, critically reflecting on the logic of manufacturing. A digital camera, a video digital camera, a tv set, a recorder, a guide, an invite, a photocopy, a voice and a picture, as soon as consumed, lose their worth. Referring to the idea of use-value of the thinker, economist and historian Karl Marx (1818–83), the artist quantified the worth of machine-made commodity (artwork), calculating the work required to supply it and the worth it acquired on the finish of the working cycle; he thus measured the rise with respect to the preliminary use.

In Bologna, for “Gennaio ‘70 – comportamenti, progetti, mediazioni,” the artist selected to give attention to the eight Marxist working hours of two TV screens. Prini obtains a comparatively exact on/off sequence by means of a pink/white/black chessboard calculation during which pink is a time unit, white is time and black is the third built-in, undifferentiated time (the transmission equipment); and by isolating every step within the collection of three (1+1=2, 2+1=3) as within the logarithmic spiral based mostly on the numeral sequence of mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci (c. 1170–1242), whereby every quantity is the sum of the 2 earlier ones. The identical process is articulated by means of typewriter drawings, during which alternating keystrokes comply with the described rhythms, and, utilizing the identical logic, marker drawings on squared sheets.

In Munich, for “Arte Povera. 13 Italienische Künstler,” in 1971 Prini carried out an experiment much like the one from Bologna. With the assistance of a technician, he demonstrated the exhaustion of a tv set by means of a set of operations. What additionally Prini was the emission of knowledge from the printed (on this case a German one) in addition to the minimal and most thrusts of sunshine and sound vitality of the gadget mandatory for the emission itself.

The identical 12 months, the solo exhibition “Merce Tipo Customary” on the L’Attico Gallery didn’t deviate from the method of (dis)meeting of the Munich TV set. The exhibition itself was conceived as an indication. Prini occupied the gallery premises with a van from the Roman firm Video Worldwide S.P.A. that equipped the tools for the closed-circuit TV system (Merchandise), which was subsequently put in in pre-defined spots across the gallery.

Between 1970 and 1975—and thus additionally following the seminal initiatives analyzed within the exhibition—Prini produced nearly 200 drawings on paper on ‘commonplace’ format sheets with the help of an Olivetti 22 typewriter. The artist used the unusual typewriter nearly as if it had been a pencil, to attract, elaborate mathematical formulation, think about two-dimensional architectures, invent nursery rhymes, document intuitions [ . . . ] confirm concepts.

The exhibition “Typewriter Drawings. Bologna/München/Rome – 1970/1971” brings collectively the drawings made across the ideas developed within the three exhibitions in Bologna, Munich and Rome, built-in with a number of principally unpublished documentary images.

The undertaking additionally constitutes the beginning of an ongoing analysis and cataloguing undertaking by the Emilio Prini Archive.

at Fondazione Antonio Dalle Nogare, Bolzano
till Could 3, 2025