“You can draw an ant-sized elephant, but you can’t draw an ant the size of an elephant.”. Anna Parini's drawing, 250 x 150 cm.

Leopoldo Wolf and Anna Parini

“You can draw an ant-sized elephant, but you can’t draw an ant the size of an elephant.” This is the challenge laid out by Anna Parini to those who visit the PARADIGMS gallery from next Tuesday, 19^th July. Anna will take up this challenge herself with a drawing of an ant measuring 5 metres wide that hangs from the wall in a position which suggests it is passing by and at any moment it will drop to the floor from the front door. With this giant version of a tiny animal, Parini, a successful artist and illustrator from Milan who collaborates with newspapers from various countries ranging from the New York Times, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe of the United States to La Vanguardia of Barcelona, making it clear that there is a huge gap between “knowing that something exists” and actually being confronted by it. To look is not to observe. With the gigantism of her participation in PARADIGMS, Parini shows the importance of small things and in doing so paves the way for the work of Leopoldo Wolf, with whom she shares her exhibitory space with in the gallery.

Wolf, originally from Brazil but now lives in Barcelona, presents MIMICKING THE MOVEMENT OF A REAL ROBOT and takes up the whole room with his miniature drawings displayed on tables as a collector’s cabinet. His “inscriptions” on paper vary from tiny spotted figures that move away from imagination by transforming themselves into images that are repeated and multiplied, images that are unveiled and organised in patterns that can occupy a whole wall. What Wolf exhibits are thoughts that have support, outline and form that capture us and lead us to thinking the drawing, according to Brazilian curator Marília Panitz who provides the text of the presentation: “They are great minimal drawings that almost hide the multiple details that embody them.” In the text, Panitz reveals: “I have two of these at home. I pass them every day. Almost invisible, illegible. Every day they force me to look at them again… and there, I lose myself in them.”

The display, that can be seen from 19^th July until 21^st August, is another initiative of PARADIGMS to develop communication between artists from both sides of the Atlantic. The gallery is open Tuesday to Friday 16.00-20.30 and Saturday 12.00-15.00.