The Giorgio Griffa Foundation presents D1–D5, an exhibition by Giorgio Griffa and Simon Starling articulated in five dialogues that bring together works by the two artists. Some of the dialogues revolve around shared projects and direct collaborations, others around formal, material, and conceptual affinities, creating correspondences, symmetries, and contrasts that are echoed in the “ping-pong” dialogue specially written by Giorgio and Simon to frame each stage of the exhibition.
The collaboration between Giorgio Griffa and Simon Starling began in 2017. Simon was fascinated by rare hand-crafted Japanese brushes made for urushi lacquer masters from the hair of Ama pearl divers, which is particularly fit for purpose thanks to its prolonged immersion in the sea and the absence of any trace of chemical detergents. He sent the brushes to Giorgio. The result was three large works on paper, which Simon then “annotated” with a text on the glass panels in which they were framed.
The exhibition showcases these three "four-handed" works, connecting different venues and places: Noise (Annotated), on view at the Foundation's Art Space; Oblique 3 (Annotated), on display at the MAO–Oriental Art Museum in Turin; and Golden Ratio (Annotated), presented at the Casey Kaplan Gallery in New York, in an exhibition opening on November 5th.
In addition to Noise (Annotated), the exhibition features eleven works, including two installations by Starling—Head to Toe and As he buffs…— which reflect his interest in connections, production processes, and the nature and potential of collaboration. Also on show are two large canvases by Griffa, both from 2025: Disordine PO and Autoxylopyrocycloboros. The latter, part of the Alter Ego cycle, is a tribute to Starling’s multifaceted work of the same name (film, slides, prints), represented in the exhibition by a burned print. A more extensive version of Autoxylopyrocycloboros—comprising 38 color slides and a projector—is held by the GAM–Modern and Contemporary Art Gallery in Turin.
Preview of the “ping-pong” of Dialogue D1
G. The first cell that multiplied, at the beginning of life, embodied an act of disorder in the previous order, and so on until it became fish, ants, elephants.
S. Head to Toe is a quiet cacophony of small disorders, an echo chamber of material and dimensional mutations. Tree resin becomes black lacquer. The trunk, from which that resin came, is cut to the height of the craftsman who, using a brush made from the hair of a Japanese Ama (pearl diver), applied that dark lacquer to a vitrine. The lacquered vitrine now contains a gold bar. The gold bar, which has been stretched to the length of the tree trunk, radiates in the light from a handmade bulb. The bulb’s tungsten filament, also the length of that stretched gold bar, that tree trunk and that craftsman, illuminates the craftsman’s now oddly-heavy, cast tungsten sandals. Gold colours glass red, and so on. Making is embodied, head to toe.
There seem to be echoes of these exchanges between elements, these knock-on effects, in Disordine PO?
G. The colour, the brush, the fabric, the signs, the unexpected, my hand, time, what happens on the canvas, they are all protagonists.
S. The brush very much became the protagonist of the three collaborative works we made together in 2017, a brush, evocatively made from the hair of Ama women—hair perfectly suited to the critical last layer of urushi lacquer. Seemingly unable to act with this highly-charged object myself, I decided to invite you to use the brush and the result was a group of three very distinctive sets of signs or codes. I then annotated your ink drawings with a further text, reconnecting the brush/tool to its origin story. This for me was a quintessential collaboration, full of trust and generosity. The brush knew in whose hands it wanted to be.
