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Luca Barcellona: Take Your Pleasure Seriously
We caught up with Luca Barcellona in his studio this morning ahead of his solo exhibition starting tonight. Called Take Your Pleasure Seriously (after the famous down-to-business Charles and Ray Eames mantra) is to be an exhibition of the artist’s work revolving around his deep sensibility and research of script, type, letterform and calligraphy. Included in the upcoming show are several of his handwritten works, as well as a limited edition booklet series of handmade xylographs (woodcuts) on Kafka.
In his workspace among hundreds of typography books, well-used pens and brushes, century-old ink in gorgeous old bottles, Barcellona schooled us on the intricacies of letterform and the Japanese calligrapher’s insistence on 59 minutes of reflection followed by a minute of frenetic and well-considered work. After we were lucky enough to watch him in action, gracefully and fluidly filling white space with phrases and an entire delicate alphabet, we salivated together over letterpress works and collections of 1970s fonts. Catch his exhibition opening tonight in the spazio Marco Bolognese, Ripa di Porta Ticinese 47.
