Time Travel (Part II)

Time Travel: Italian Masters through a Contemporary Lens continues at Petzel, on view from January 10th, 2024 through February 10th, 2024, at the gallery’s Upper East Side location, 35 East 67th Street. In partnership with the London-based DYS 44 Lampronti Gallery, this second iteration of Time Travel will feature a new installation of exemplary works from the 16th to the 19th century, exhibited on the gallery’s parlor floor.

In approaching these Italian Master works, the viewer encounters a distinct symbolic vocabulary, setting myth in motion, like a portal to another world. The boundary between real and imaginary space becomes blurred. The open wooden doors of Domenico Remps’ Cabinet of Curiosities tease the onlooker in hallmark trompe l’œil fashion. Grounding real monuments in fantastical landscapes, the ruins of Giovanni Paolo Panini’s capriccio gesture toward an apostolic past, with fragments of Classical sculpture scattered among magisterial columns. Bartolomeo Cavarozzi’s Boy Bitten by a Crab lurches toward the viewer with play and theatricality, placing them in the moment of sting. Annibale Caracci’s Study of a Male Head characterizes the passionate pastosità of the artist’s hand, bringing flesh to fruition.

Beyond virtuosity, beyond moralism, lies a sensual dynamism, a cinematographic drama, which continues to draw audiences to these paintings centuries from their conception. Hollywood-esque in its emotional exuberance, the Baroque brings forth a sense of movement and tension, an oscillation between the sacred and profane, bursting from the canvas’ delicate surface. Through the act of looking, figures, objects and landscapes become so vivid as if to extend into a third dimension, speaking from periods past. Time Travel stages a conversation with the past, one that revitalizes our comprehension of how intellectual conflicts have motivated artists through the ages.

A selection of works in response from contemporary artists were on view on the gallery’s third floor from November 15th to December 22nd, considering the legacies of these genres and lexicons. Contemporary artworks featured included those by Ross Bleckner, John Currin, Roe Ethridge, Josephine Halvorson, Jutta Koether, Jeff Koons, Lucy McKenzie, Pieter Schoolwerth, Cindy Sherman, Emily Mae Smith, Bob Thompson, and Emma Webster.

Artworks featured from DYS 44 Lampronti Gallery include those by Master of the Acquavella Still-Life, Cavalier d’Arpino, Carlo Bonavia, Ippolito Caffi, Guido Cagnacci, Canaletto, Annibale Carracci, Bernardo Cavallino, Bartolomeo Cavarozzi, Michelangelo Cerquozzi, Jacopo Fabris, Luca Forte, Fede Galizia, Artemisia Gentileschi, Antiveduto Gramatica, Guercino, Master of Hartford, Gerrit van Honthorst, Antonio Joli, Johann Liss, Giovanni Paolo Panini, Pietro Paolini, Domenico Remps, Jusepe de Ribera, Antonio Maria Vassallo, and Gaspar van Wittel.