Fast and cool: a concise overview of high-concept objects dating from the mid-1960s to the present reintroduces New York audiences to an Italian contemporary who has pursued a formally independent—yet critically pertinent—artistic course - Gianni Piacentino - Brief Article

Art in America, June, 2002 by Marcia E. Vetrocq

These are unapologetically male objects, steeped in the culture of challenge and triumph, yet conceived with a fundamentally tender, albeit rigorously unsentimental, regard. It is as if the tenuousness of such aerodynamic fantasies were as compelling to the artist as their ostensible boldness. Anchored by stands and lacking any accommodation for rider or driver, the vehicles are no less thwarted than they are sublime. The recurring image of the Wright Brothers' craft (which, after all, stayed aloft just 12 seconds for its maiden flight), hovering like the dove of the Holy Spirit in the upper reaches of the altarlike W.B. Flight (1994), is always rendered by Piacentino without pilot or engine. In the end, this body of work is not so much about the glorification of speed or victory, but rather about the precision engineering of dreams, an enterprise that brings materials, the hand and the mind into perfect, if fragile, accord.

"Gianni Piacentino: Works 1966 to 2002" is on view at Esso Gallery in New York May 3-July 6. Piacentino's work was included in two recent exhibitions on the theme of the collector's taste: "Boomerang--Collector's Choice," in New York at Exit Art/The First World [Nov. 12, 2001-Jan. 12, 2002], and "De Gustibus. Collezione privata Italia," curated by Achille Bonito Oliva and Sergio Risaliti, in Siena at the Palazzo delle Papesse and Santa Maria della Scala [Mar. 3-May 12].