EMILIO PRINI, "Untitled", 13,5 x 8 x 5 cm, 250 ml olive oil can, punctured, 2011.

EMILIO PRINI
Untitled, 13,5 x 8 x 5 cm, 250 ml olive oil can, punctured, 2011.

Emilio Prini (b. 1938 - d. 2016) has created two works for Due Leoni. The first, in 2011, is the result of an initial request to create an olive oil edition, which was met, over many months of negotiation, with the proposal to hammer nails into a 250 ml green metal can. The result, artistically a reference to Lucio Fontana, or Yoko Ono’s Painting to Hammer a Nail In, is of utmost beauty, but utterly unusable. It’s almost a sort of challenge to the farmer himself. At the same time, and as if to reward the patience of curator Cornelia Lauf, Prini allowed only one, precious, piece to be completed. This unique version was punctured repeatedly with hammer and nail, under the supervision of the artist. 

A second edition for Due Leoni was created with Emilio Prini, in exchange for twenty liters of our finest extra virgin olive oil. What was meant to be a new and unlimited edition took over two years to produce (finished in 2012), and is, once again, a unique piece. It consists of a copper bar, or standard measure, one meter, sourced by Veronica Bellei, and signed by the artist, which rests on two identical green 5-liter cans of olive oil. Dionysia Drakou, Jessica Murtha, and Martha Carillo Cardenas assisted from time to time. Here, Prini was teasing his long-time and deceased friend, Mario Merz, who created a work with neon and olive oil can, many decades earlier. The merciless game that is art. Pictured, the signed copper bar, 1 meter, which curator Cornelia Lauf brought to her lecture at Palazzo Altemps and leaned against a famous sarcophagus, in 2013.