{"id":9859,"date":"2021-05-03T18:27:29","date_gmt":"2021-05-03T16:27:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.spazioc21.com\/collabs\/moneyless-2019\/moneyless-2019-presentation\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T11:15:01","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T09:15:01","slug":"moneyless-2019-presentation","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.spazioc21.com\/en\/collabs\/moneyless-2019\/moneyless-2019-presentation\/","title":{"rendered":"MONEYLESS 2019 – presentation"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row full_width=”stretch_row” el_class=”riga”][vc_column width=”1\/4″ offset=”vc_hidden-sm vc_hidden-xs”][vc_widget_sidebar sidebar_id=”cs-17″][\/vc_column][vc_column width=”2\/4″][vc_empty_space height=”85px”][vc_column_text]\/ PRESENTATION<\/strong>[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

MONEYLESS, The Geometric Alchemist of Urban Art<\/h2>\n

by Gian Guido Maria Grassi[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

The exhibition Moneyless \u2013 The Geometric Alchemist of Urban Art<\/i>, curated by Gian Guido Maria Grassi, is dedicated to one of the most renowned contemporary artists to emerge from the Lucca area.
\nMoneyless, born Teo Pirisi (Milan, 1980), had just returned to Lucca after a major project in Sweden\u2014where he painted an entire gallery\u2014and was preparing to leave for the United States to take part in several events. Today, he is internationally recognized as both a pioneer of abstract muralism in Italy and one of the few to have successfully brought it from the streets into museums.
\nOrganized by the Fondazione Lucca Sviluppo and the Fondazione Banca del Monte di Lucca, with the collaboration of the association StART \u2013 Open Your Eyes and the patronage of the City of Lucca, the exhibition is part of a broader series of initiatives dedicated to urban art in the Lucca area. In 2018, Moneyless had already created the first two institutional murals in San Vito for the stART Festival<\/i> project.
\nThis exhibition offered an opportunity to explore, through one of its leading figures, what is commonly known as Street Art\u2014the most disruptive and global artistic movement of the past forty years. Street Art has transformed the collective imagination, sparked urban and social change, and is characterized by a wide range of expressive languages, diverse influences and traditions, a variety of materials, and a multitude of formats and spaces. This multiplicity has only expanded as Street Art has evolved: from spray cans to brushes, from illegality to institutional recognition, from underground jams to art festivals, from train yards and abandoned factories to collaborations with major fashion brands, commercial enterprises, prestigious galleries, and museums.
\nThis marked the first official entry of Street Art within the historic walls of Lucca\u2019s city center.
\nFor the occasion, the Palazzo delle Esposizioni was outfitted in a completely new way. Transformed in 2019 into a canonical museum-style white<\/i> cube<\/i>, the space featured an innovative display of paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures. Notably, it also allowed the artist to create five temporary wall paintings that broke the boundaries of traditional formats and expanded across the architectural surfaces. Additionally, two installations were created, including one on the fa\u00e7ade of the auditorium (formerly the Oratory of the Madonnina) in Piazza San Martino. This installation, made using thread anchored to nails already present on the wall\u2014normally used to support the lights of the traditional Luminaria di Santa Croce\u2014resulted in a visual short-circuit, connecting contemporary, disruptive artistic language with the city\u2019s classical and historical material dimension.
\nThe nearly 100 works on display\u2014most from private collections and museums\u2014allowed viewers to understand the poetics, technical evolution, and formal development of Moneyless\u2019s work. Through rich photographic and video documentation, the exhibition traced his career as a street artist, highlighting the essential relationship between works created in the studio for indoor settings and those realized outdoors<\/i> on a large scale for public spaces.
\n\u201cThe name Moneyless is closely linked to my way of working. Distant from the relentless consumption of the contemporary world, I pursue simplicity and essence as core values. Society is overloaded with images and sounds\u2014a great chaos that ultimately communicates nothing. The richness of a minimal form, to me, lies in its poverty: it\u2019s a silence that brings thought back to the surface.\u201d<\/em>
\nFrom this reflection arises Teo Pirisi\u2019s ongoing research, rooted in an exploration of the fundamental relationship between nature and geometry\u2014sometimes in a static, ontological sense, and other times in a dynamic, historical one. His works explore this evolving relationship through contrasting yet interconnected elements such as matter and energy, reason and freedom, light and spirituality, color and movement, form and space. From the musical interplay of these forces, a wide variety of series have emerged\u2014works in which his aesthetic inquiry runs parallel to an almost alchemical quest for the purity of form, which, like a Heraclitean flame, always seems to elude grasp in its constant becoming.
\nThis retrospective exhibition thus offered an insightful journey through Moneyless\u2019s oeuvre, demonstrating the logical and stylistic coherence of his work\u2014without ever losing the graphic power and expressive force rooted in his underground, graffiti-based adolescence in the 1990s.
\nA catalogue was published to accompany the exhibition, chronicling Moneyless\u2019s distinguished artistic career through a substantial body of artworks and public interventions. These include pieces created on five continents\u2014from Milan to Los Angeles, Madrid to Istanbul, Buenos Aires to Perth\u2014as well as those developed specifically for Lucca.
\nThe exhibition was enriched by guided tours, talks, events, and community initiatives. Highlights included a film screening (Basquiat) on Friday, May 10, 2019, at the Cineforum; guided tours on May 5, 11, and 18; a public conference for architects titled Urbanism & Street Art on May 29; and the presentation of the exhibition catalogue on June 6. Before the end of the 2019 school year, educational activities\u2014including workshops and school visits\u2014were launched, particularly involving students from the Passaglia Art High School in Lucca. <\/p>\n

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MEDIA RETURNS<\/strong><\/h3>\n