Emilio Cavallini “Harmony Runs On A Thread”

GR Gallery

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GR gallery presents “Emilio Cavallini: Harmony Runs On A Thread”, artist Emilio Cavallini’s first solo show at GR gallery. Given the artist’s fame as an innovator in fashion design, the exhibition will start on September 8, 2016 in conjunction with the beginning of New York Fashion Week. Spanning over three decades of his career, the retrospective will feature twenty-five of his works, including his best known series Attuale-Infinito, Biforcazioni, Frattali and Diagrammi.

The exhibition is curated by GR gallery’s founder Giovanni Granzotto and its director, Alberto Pasini. The exhibition’s fully illustrated catalogue presents an essay by Giovanni Granzotto.

Throughout his creatively innovative career, Emilio Cavallini has seamlessly weaved fashion and fine art together, two worlds that have in turn benefitted greatly from his contributions. Beginning in 1970 with his founding of Stilnovo, a fashion company that has made a lasting effect on the textile industry, Cavallini unleashed his creative expression with thread, printed fabrics, and textiles through his art as well as through his journey in the fashion world.

Only a few years ago in 2010, Emilio decided to dedicate himself solely to his art.
In February 2011, at the Triennale Expo in Milan, Cavallini showed his work to the public for the first time. He comments: “At the age of sixty, the time had come to make up lost time (let me be clear: I never waste my time but during the years of the great “tra la la” with fashion, I had limited it, circumscribed it within the sphere of pure family and entrepreneurial duty).”

Cavallini’s artwork is characterized by free experimentation under the influence of op and kinetic art, abstract constructivism, and spatialism. His thread and fabrics are the uniting force of his artistic output. Through his use of unconventional materials (designed and produced by the artist throughout the years) like nylon thread and yarn spools, Cavallini journeys to discover relationships between chaos/disorder and organization and placement. In his own words, “I was breaking down barriers, going beyond the limits of censorship.” His geometric patterns (squares, circles, rectangles, dots, lines, etc.) accurately present as though put together through precise calculations in a process of experimentation and organized disorder. The combination of brilliant colors, dizzying patterns, and repetitive rhythm almost paradoxically create great unity. With thread and printed fabric stretched over yarn spools in complex arrangements, we are struck not only by intricate designs and shapes but also by the beautiful tension of thread, a subtle force that comes through in all his works. His art is rife with metaphors of weaving, pushing, and pulling- the literal weaving of thread and the conceptual weaving of art and design. His rhythmic push and pull of fabric not only catches but holds the eye.

Emilio Cavallini (San Miniato, 1945) is a renowned artist and designer whose forty-year contribution to the fashion world includes singular creations for the houses of Mary Quant, Dior, Celine, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen and Gucci. His eponymous label is exported worldwide, from New York to London, Paris, Milan, Tokyo and beyond. In 1989 he was awarded Venice’s Leone d’Oro for creativity and innovation. His artistic and industrial contributions were recognized in the last decade by Italy’s Prime Minister and President with several national honors including “Knight of Industry”, “Officer of the Republic” and “Commendatore”. An artist’s book published by Skira was released in 2010 to celebrate three decades of his art practice. Cavallini’s work was presented in a solo exhibition at the 2011 Triennale of Milan, during which he constructed a site specific, four-meter cube of stocking thread. His work has been the subject of critical texts by Sergio Risaliti, Laura Cherubini, Silvia Pegoraro, among others. Rosai Ugolini Modern- New York (2015), Opera Gallery, Paris-France(2015), and Galleria Valmore, Vicenza-Italy (2015) presented his most recent solo exhibitions.