GUARDIANS, 2020

GUARDIANS
JOSH LILLEY GALLERY – LONDON, 28 February- 27 March 2020

Guardians is Italian sculptor Benedetto Pietromarchi’s fourth solo exhibition at Josh Lilley gallery in London, inaugurating the renovated gallery storefront space and a new era of programming at the gallery.

Long-celebrated for sensuous renderings of nature that are both lofty in their imagination and grounded in the academy, Pietromarchi presents his guardians as a group of lifesize birds in terracotta and bronze. Existing, through flight, in a space between the immanent and the transcendent world, the Guardians works embody mythologies, hopes and lessons.

A pelican with head bowed in deference but shoulders drawn back in preparation. A hooded eagle, impaired and hypersensitive, ready for action. A bronze hoopoe, a little bird with a dramatic crown, weighs down the dancing rhizome of an excavated root. Two birds of prey with metallic beaks and flinty stares emerge from the wall in a sea of feathers, purpose emerging from a pillow. Pietromarchi’s suite of sculptures depict a family of emotions, linked across the air, surrounding the artist’s psyche, distributing mystery and offering a guiding hand.