Claudio Parmiggiani, Senza titolo, Untitled, 1971, canvas, model boat, soot, 70 x 100cm [Courtesy Archivio Claudio Parmiggiani, Photo: Lucio Rossi]

THE artist’s “search for an image, object or assemblage that transcends time and individual experience to evoke a universal, existential truth”, is the staring point for the latest show at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art.

It’s a fascinating small-scale retrospective of subtlety and sophistication from Claudio Parmiggiani (born 1943), spanning 50 years’ output, and it is the first institutional exhibition in the United Kingdom dedicated to this contemporary pioneer.

And it’s both challenging and provocative, not least in that there’s a clear tendency for him not to bother with titles for his works.

But the art itself is particularly and defiantly enigmatic.

Claudio Parmiggiani, Senza titolo, Untitled, 2023, smoke and soot on board, 203 x 115cm, private collection, Switzerland [Courtesy Tornabuoni Art, Photo: Moritz Bernoully, Courtesy Archivio Claudio Parmiggiani]

Parmiggiani, who was born in Luzzara by the River Po south of Mantua, himself notes, “For me, silence is a material to work with, a substance.

“Silence is a form of eloquence. A work does not live in silence but within its silence.”

And the Estorick’s director Dr Roberta Cremoncini has written of “this contemporary master” that: “His work is an invitation to contemplate emptiness and to recognise beauty in the traces left on everything by dust and time.”

Parmiggiani’s Delocazioni (Displacements) that he began around 1970 have a central part in this show.

He uses fire, smoke, and soot to create “negative space” to explore absences.

Panels depict bookcases where only traces remain, and bottles and jars, and even the human form. There’s a definite emotional charge on offer with the works here, but not everything has to be haunting.

Claudio Parmiggiani, Senza titolo, Untitled, 2009, book, plaster cast, clock, 50 x 70 x 30cm [Courtesy Archivio Claudio Parmiggiani, Photo: Lucio Rossi]

With Extinguished Light, A lume spento, 1985, for example, has a blown-out oil lamp that nevertheless lights up a plaster cast “as if possessing the radiant afterlife of a dead star”.

The Estorick note that his pioneering and innovative style redefined artistic expression through an introspective lens during a period of crisis for figurative art.

Those in search of more figurative solidity here can, indeed, find a 1971 piece with a model boat. But that also features singed sails and soot. And another work, without soot, retains at least a vestige of a search for meaning and Parmiggiani’s pursuit of a supposed “universal, existential truth”. But in What is Tradition? from 1997, we are faced with a kitchen knife, piercing a cast lead ear, and stuck in book, a philosophical work by Italian scholar Elémire Zolla (1926-2002). You may prefer the untitled plaster cast head and clock on a book (pictured).

• Claudio Parmiggiani is at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, 39a Canonbury Square, N1 2AN, until August 31. www.estorickcollection.com

Making a mark

Rachel Jones, Gated Canyons, 2024, 360 x 250 x 3.5cm, oil stick and oil pastel on stretched linen, courtesy the artist, photograph by Eva Herzog

RACHEL Jones has made a mark at Dulwich, the oldest purpose-built public art gallery in the world, with the first solo show by a “contemporary artist” in its main exhibition space.

The 34-year-old has produced a new body of work for the show, Gated Canyons *, with eight large-scale and six smaller paintings hanging with others created over the last seven years.

The Glasgow Art School and Royal Academy graduate, who was born in Whitechapel and grew up in Essex – and whose recent successes include a solo show at the Museum of African Diaspora San Francisco and designing the Britannia trophy statuettes for the Brit Awards 2024 – demonstrates her distinctive use of colour and bold motifs to deliver emotional and powerful messages.

Dulwich director Jennifer Scott says: “ These majestic new works fizz with the possibilities of freedom, contemplation and connection. Jones’s techniques – from leaving the canvas exposed, to blending bold colours with her fingers – echo the innovations of historic painters from Rubens to Van Dyck…”

In fact, direct inspiration for the show is provided from a mid-17th century oil by Dutch artist Pieter Boel (1622-1674), an engaging small study, Head of a Hound, from the Dulwich collection. Arranged thematically the new works share the title of the show, exploring the idea of spaces both “closed off and expansive; excluding and liberating”.

Among Jones’s recurring motifs, for example, are the mouth and, introduced for the first time here, bricks or building blocks. She says: “The repetition of a mouth filled with teeth is how I play with, subdue, elevate or put meaning and content into ideas around representations of self and Blackness. It’s both specific and very general.”

The contrast between earlier and much smaller works, such as A Slow Teething from 2019 and Say Cheeeeese from 2021 (at just 17 x 11cm), and the large Gated Canyons canvases shows interesting progression.

• Rachel Jones: Gated Canyons is at Dulwich Picture Gallery, College Road, SE21 7AD until October 19. www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk