Hiquily & Marino Di Teana • The transfiguration of metal

For the upcoming exhibition, Galerie LOFT is honoring two artists who have profoundly upset the codes of sculpture by revolutionizing the practice of metal sculpture and are today among the greatest figures of contemporary sculpture in France.
They have each with their own singularity (the playful movement and eroticism for Hiquily and the architectural construction for Marino di Teana) tamed the raw metal (often recycling) which they knew how to tame with their extraordinary technical qualities. They are part of this first generation of artists whose work on iron, brass or steel (hammered, forged, welded, polished or patinated, etc.), enabled metal sculpture to obtain their true letters of nobility and to pave the way for new generations of sculptors such as Bernard Venet or Richard Serra.
It is with a certain emotion and a great deal of pride that Galerie LOFT was able to produce the two catalogs raisonnés retracing the life and work of these two artists. Each book, produced over more than six years, presents the evolution of the career and works of these two men with exceptional destinies. Through their unshakeable desire to maintain total creative independence without ever giving in to fashion effects or the system, they have thus been able to produce rich and complex works, sometimes experimental or innovative, often monumental, which have marked the urban landscape (in particular by the realization of many monumental sculpture projects in France as part of the 1% but also abroad) and enriched many public and private collections around the world.