Enrico Magnani | Exhibitions

TOTEM & TAO

Where past and future meet

Ancient wisdom, ancient signs, ancient symbols. A shared heritage of humanity, revisited and reinterpreted with variations on a theme. Light, shadow, masculine, feminine, earth, sky, strength, grace, creation, and life.

These are the archetypes, the core, the guiding principles of Totem and Tao, Enrico Magnani’s solo exhibition at Paola Pozzi’s FrameArsArtes Gallery. In Totem and Tao, the artist continues his exploration of the relationship between the spiritual and the material.

The Totem collection, which gathers timeless and universal iconic gestures and symbols, was created between 2015 and 2017. By experimenting with materials in relation to symbols, the artist harnesses the power of primal forms, colors, and textures—whose meaning resonates across all human cultures. Stones, sands, tar, clays, and gold come together to create boundaryless three-dimensional marks and shapes, echoing artistic expressions from prehistoric times to the present day. Archetypal symbols have always been a means to explore the unknown and the unspeakable: signs that dwell within each of us, mysteries that the mind cannot grasp but only the heart can understand—our first and most distant mythical ancestors.

The Tao series, inspired by the purity, simplicity, and elegance of the Tao, features three-dimensional works created in 2021. The deliberate, millennia-old gestures of tradition are captured and crystallized in matter. The Strength of Stone rests on delicate velvet—opposites merge in a union evoking the laws of the Tao. Each piece is paired with a response from the I-Ching, the ancient Chinese oracle, an integral part of Taoist tradition. The coin embedded in the works is the magical object used to consult the oracle and receive its answer: the seed and the fruit reunited.

The two worlds of Totem and Tao coexist in harmony within the exhibition space of FrameArsArtes.

We recognize them in the blue, black, red, and gold, in the symbols and materials that strike the viewer, stirring emotion as they rediscover something they never knew they knew.

Paola Pozzi