Massimo Kaufmann, OSSA MEA

Room 8

«The work of art is an answer to a question that cannot be formulated.»
Massimo Kaufmann

«What are these large pictorial surfaces if not an explicit form of “exception” – if not a questioning of this fundamental core of art making? It is on the basis of such suggestions that we should say that Kaufmann’s exercises constitute a new form of questioning: a question asked no more and no less than with the very means, and the very technique, of “asking”. This means that with this obstinate return to painting, Kaufmann forces us to make a mental leap, an “exercise”, which therefore goes far beyond the pictorial “specific”: it is a question of hand and eye skills, a “musical” ear, a sense of “rhythm” (a term which in Greek also means “number”), but also of “ritual”, held together by the rigorous application of a rule and a method, which we must have the patient discipline to “recognise”.»
Marco Senaldi

THE ARTIST

Massimo Kaufmann was born in 1963 in Milan. He lives and works between Milan and New York. He studied Literature and Philosophy at the University of Milan. He began his career collaborating with a number of magazines, in particular Flash Art, and then established himself as a leading exponent of the artistic generation of the early 1990s. He has exhibited in numerous galleries and public institutions in Italy, Europe and the United States, including: Studio Guenzani in Milan in 1987, 1988, 1992 and 1995, Palazzo della Permanente in Milan in 2001, Galleria Sperone in New York in 1994 and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Nice in 1997. One of his works was recently purchased by MAMBO in Bologna. His most recent painting is part of an abstract sphere of maps, grids, like cities that develop out of all proportion in explosions of colour. In 2004 he exhibited Apriti cielo, presenting this new cycle of works at the 1000eventi gallery in Milan. In 2006 the exhibition 24 h – Massimo Kaufmann was held at the Galleria Astuni in Pietrasanta and in 2007 the Galleria In Arco in Turin, with which he has been collaborating since 1991, hosted the exhibition Bubbles.