‘Mercuriale’ is the title chosen by Bizhan Bassiri for the exhibition in Gallerja, in which he evokes in various ways the hermetic divinity, messenger for the gods, in a work that features the ineffable mineral and the mythological snake twisting around Mercury’s caduceus, but especially in the gallery of portraits intended by the artist as “spectators” of the sculpture displayed in the middle of the room.
As witnesses of his work, Bassiri lined up the sequence of fifty-one portraits belonging to different epochs, at one time defined as “faces of fate”, to stand as ideal or real interlocutors of his imaginary laboratory. As is familiar to many, the works are inspired by “magmatic thought”, whose volcanic manifestations reflect the use of matrices and sculptural processes with a deeply poetic effect.

With the name ‘Mercuriale’, the artist identifies a place and a relational condition in which the “portraits of fate” surround the Dadi della sorte (1990-2008). First announced and theorized in proposition numbers 15, 16 and 17 in Manifesto of Magmatic Thought (1986) and later in 39 and 46, the artist takes a stand once again on the “game” of art, distancing himself from the Duchampian model.
All in all, Bizhan Bassiri’s work affirms the organic flow between past and present in the tunnel of time, with ritual procedures and visionary offerings.