Two mahogany figures stand as guardians at the door as competing sculptures made out of chess pieces, white and brown, well-carved and crude, hang on the wall. Bullet casings, arranged in the shape of a pyramid, rest on top of an angel's outstretched wings, and in the next box over, a glassy-eyed head sits on top a jar of rusty nails, a forest of metal prongs driven into the shape of a sunset in the wood above.
Such is one's first impression of "Metaphysics, Mystery, and Magic," the new spring exhibit opening today at the Tufts University Gallery in the Aidekman Arts Center. With an opening reception tonight from 5-8 p.m., the exposition features the work of metaphysical artist Enrico Pinardi. The showcased artist is a Cambridge native who blends warm colors and contrasting images in the collection of paintings, drawings, and sculptures currently on display in the Tisch and Koppelman Galleries.
There are no human figures in Pinardi's work, but in his paintings, the inanimate often take on extraordinary human qualities. Pawns become people, and obelisks and bullets take on qualities of the human form. Also present is the sensation that, though all his paintings feature still-life, they capture snapshots of a just-abandoned scene. Empty tables and scattered cards provide evidence of the activity that recently ceased; open trap doors stand as proof that a faceless individual stepped outside only a moment ago.
This lack of visible people, rather than making the work feel dead, actually helps the viewer identify with the paintings in a way that human faces could not. It's easy to imagine someone we know standing behind the curtain, having only just left the table or vanished through the door. And it's this profound sense of intimacy that helps us put ourselves or people we know into the scene at hand, while bringing power to the artist's message.
"A lot of my work comes from frustration," Pinardi said. "I always thought that by the time I was 70, things would change, but that never happened. The big stuff is still out there. I think the idea behind all my artwork is that on the evolutionary scale, we haven't gone very far. The same hate is still here, and it doesn't seem to want to go away."
Downstairs, dozens of paintings of pyramids and obelisks stand in stark tribute to ancient monoliths; the back wall is lined with a series of faceless, eyeless figures standing bare before a firing squad, riddled with bullets, their mouths gaping wide to emit silent screams.
"The screams," Pinardi said, "go on and on and on. The mouth is open, but you can still hear the screams. A day doesn't go by without someplace getting bombed."
Repeated throughout the artist's work are images of pyramids and obelisks, functioning as silent monuments alongside an empty table, built of nails or thorn branches in one of his many sculptures, or standing freely in individual paintings and works.
Pinardi explained the repeated appearance of monoliths in his work. "A pyramid, historically, represents a new beginning," he said. His work is about the future as much as the past, and even as his paintings reflect on days long gone by, they still contain an element of hope for change in the future.
One of the highlights of the exhibit is a new freestanding sculpture making its debut in the Boston area. Set against a dark backdrop, it is divided into three parts. A curtain is draped over the leftmost segment, with death standing, barely noticeable, behind it. The center panel is, as Pinardi described it, "a shop for creating crosses." He noted that one "can sell a lot of stuff using religion," and comments that the missile present inside one of the crosses represents "a misuse of elements and symbols." In the right section, a humanlike figure stands shrouded in linen, representative of the ideas that are destroyed by war, but in a moment of hope, two other figures rise out of the darkness behind it.
"Pandemonium and chaos are always present," Pinardi said. "My art is quiet in a sense, but it's also full of that. In the end, you can't kill a good idea. It will just surface and come back like trees."
Pinardi describes magic as something that every artist faces when they come up against a blank canvass, and it's clear that the painter and sculptor has a gift for turning even the most mundane scene into a crafted story. His work, though always of simple objects, still manages to capture a sense of humanity inside the faceless figures.
"Still lifes also contain elements of how I feel," Pinardi said. "We all get impressions and we can all see a sunset, but it's much more intimate to paint what's going on inside you."
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