EXCERPT FROM THE “INNOCENZO ODESCALCHI” CATALOGUE

by Gianluca Marziani

 

Works take shape in silence in relaxed concentration and recount the chromatic skins of INNER LIFE. Almost as if an eye reminiscent of Caravaggio had had sunk into the microcosm of pigment, magnifying some inches of an old canvas seeking its soul within matter capturing everlasting energy. Innocenzo Odescalchi behaves like an abstract sounder, gauging the boundaries of mental vitality on flaky walls, on damp frescoes, on ceilings and floors, in shreds of past beauty.

The very term ‘abstraction’ now reverses its etimology and becomes spiritual motion within the figurative reality of the world. Here abstractions do not reflect the stylistic features of abstract expressionism, the informal tension, the avant-gardist rigour between America and Europe in the post-war period. Rather, Innocenzo Odescalchi proceeds with the autonomy of those who strengthen by radically isolating themselves from the excesses of media exteriors. And this is done not in an attempt to ignore history, but simply to avoid anything that may disrupt the turbulent quietness of individual research. This Roman artist assesses masters and quotations, analyses the archetypes influencing him, and reviews the known events of abstract language. However, he is also aware of his needs, of the drives in his conscience, of vitality beyond encyclopedic data. His art interacts with history to then get ahead of it through emotions of harmonic refinement, pictorially musical, poured out as dry free jazz in the style of Ornette Coleman. Innocenzo Odescalchi renders his work a JOURNAL OF INSIGHT. The grammar is that of the avant-garde, with words chasing a necessary past: but visual sentences now appear to be autonomous, personal, thaumaturgic as against the chaos of this world.