Mark Lecchini
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One Off is pleased to present Mark Lecchini 'Starting from Zero' Opens Saturday 30 October - 21 November 2021
Gallery Open Tuesday through Sunday, 10am - 4.30pm Please note that masks are mandatory around the gallery. |
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About the exhibition
STARTING FROM ZERO, curated by One Off Contemporary Art Gallery, introduces us to Mark Lecchini’s abstract paintings … his first solo exhibition.
The thoughts and strategies that animate Lecchini’s architecture, are reflected in his canvases. Lecchini’s architecture favours simplicity. It is an architecture of honest forms with a straightforward grammar of construction, employing the abstract synthesis of space, light and the movement of air. His painting follows a similar strategy of restraint and his aim is always for the simplest of pictorial resolutions.
In Lecchini’s work, one sees various references: in minimalism, in abstraction, both historical and contemporary, and a personal search for geometries to be placed in space with rigour, elegance and an empathy for colour. The interplay of perpendicular lines, in dialogue with the colours and the geometry, invite the viewer to lose their way and to look for experiences nestled in the limits between spaces and in the limit itself. It is not only the line that creates the composition but also the colour. There seems to be a challenge between the two, a quest that at times breaks free from geometry and gives way to more nuanced forms where light dilates. Abstraction is not a means to an end but creates an intense dialectic, involving the spectator and leading them into the pleasure of nuances that vary, above all, between the ochre/brown of the earth and the colder colours of the sky.
The artist entrusts the abstract nature of these works with the task of expressing meanings and arousing sensations without the need for mimesis. This anti-naturalistic attitude stems from the urgency of affirming the artist’s subjectivity that gives meaning to things. In painting, the artist finds himself grappling with intellectual and emotional thoughts, and the mind, by selecting, seems to guide him towards his own personal Modular (Le Corbusier), understood architecturally as a basic proportion, capable of harmonising each form with the whole.
In Lecchini’s words; “My architecture is a blank canvas for my clients to inflict their personality”.
The paintings are a reductive extension of the architectural blueprints. They suggest a broader path, questioning not only the values of architecture, but the complexity of identity: a self that is located in space.
This exhibition is a shared experience of the artist who receives pure pleasure from painting, accepted as an almost daily practice, a physical language inspiring new trajectories of thought. Art, therefore, has the capacity to give voice to the essence, to the ultimate truth, and the innermost thoughts.
The thoughts and strategies that animate Lecchini’s architecture, are reflected in his canvases. Lecchini’s architecture favours simplicity. It is an architecture of honest forms with a straightforward grammar of construction, employing the abstract synthesis of space, light and the movement of air. His painting follows a similar strategy of restraint and his aim is always for the simplest of pictorial resolutions.
In Lecchini’s work, one sees various references: in minimalism, in abstraction, both historical and contemporary, and a personal search for geometries to be placed in space with rigour, elegance and an empathy for colour. The interplay of perpendicular lines, in dialogue with the colours and the geometry, invite the viewer to lose their way and to look for experiences nestled in the limits between spaces and in the limit itself. It is not only the line that creates the composition but also the colour. There seems to be a challenge between the two, a quest that at times breaks free from geometry and gives way to more nuanced forms where light dilates. Abstraction is not a means to an end but creates an intense dialectic, involving the spectator and leading them into the pleasure of nuances that vary, above all, between the ochre/brown of the earth and the colder colours of the sky.
The artist entrusts the abstract nature of these works with the task of expressing meanings and arousing sensations without the need for mimesis. This anti-naturalistic attitude stems from the urgency of affirming the artist’s subjectivity that gives meaning to things. In painting, the artist finds himself grappling with intellectual and emotional thoughts, and the mind, by selecting, seems to guide him towards his own personal Modular (Le Corbusier), understood architecturally as a basic proportion, capable of harmonising each form with the whole.
In Lecchini’s words; “My architecture is a blank canvas for my clients to inflict their personality”.
The paintings are a reductive extension of the architectural blueprints. They suggest a broader path, questioning not only the values of architecture, but the complexity of identity: a self that is located in space.
This exhibition is a shared experience of the artist who receives pure pleasure from painting, accepted as an almost daily practice, a physical language inspiring new trajectories of thought. Art, therefore, has the capacity to give voice to the essence, to the ultimate truth, and the innermost thoughts.
Beatrice Polato – October 2021
Beatrice Polato is a Phd candidate at University of Barcelona (Spain) who is researching contemporary visual art in Kenya, where she is temporarily living.
Beatrice Polato is a Phd candidate at University of Barcelona (Spain) who is researching contemporary visual art in Kenya, where she is temporarily living.
Artist's Biography
Mark Lecchini was born in 1963 in Manchester, England. His early interest in art and architecture developed during his family holidays in Italy where his father introduced him to his classical Italian heritage. He went on to read Architecture at Canterbury Art College where he was tutored by Elia Zenghelis who taught him to “Always start from first principles, to take nothing for granted and to question absolutely everything”. Drawing, part and parcel of architectural communication, developed into a love of painting. In 1989 he won joint prize in the annual RIBA International Student Architecture Competition and in 1991 he became a registered architect. He worked for six years in London before leaving Norman Foster and Partners to set up his own practice in Kenya.
Lecchini’s paintings are brought privately by his architectural clients.
Lecchini’s paintings are brought privately by his architectural clients.
Preview of Works
Click thumbnail to enlarge and scroll through all images
Exhibition openings are usually on the last Saturday of every month, excluding December.
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