Two concurrent solo exhibitions of work by Evgeny Antufiev – Light Casts Shadow at Casa Morandi in Bologna and ‘Frozen Light’ at Casa Museo Morandi in Grizzana – place the Russian artist in dialogue with Giorgio Morandi's legacy, exploring the opposition between light and shadow through bronze, mosaic, and found objects.

It is unbearably hot in Bologna, and the rays of merciless sun stream into the studio in Giorgio Morandi’s (1890–1964) museum apartment on via Fondazza, illuminating a massive bronze vase standing on a small white plinth in the centre of the room. This is a work by the Russian artist Evgeny Antufiev (b. 1986), featured in his exhibition ‘Light Casts Shadow’.

Antufiev’s works are sometimes arranged as if the owner of the flat had thoughtfully placed them there to decorate the table in his dining room with a vase containing a bronze flower, whose petals are made up of insects.

An installation by Antufiev lies in one of the display cases that houses items that once belonged to Morandi, amphoras, an etching by Rembrandt, medieval miniatures. It is a crumpled bronze spoon and a miniature chest with two jugs on top and the skull of an incredible, long-eared creature with no lower jaw. Perhaps they were discovered in the tomb of some unknown civilisation?

“This is a difficult exhibition for me,” – says Evgeny Antufiev. – “When you compare your art to that of artists like Morandi, you compare it to the light of the sun. A sun merciless to the slightest injustice, a sun that instantly reveals every flaw. For several years I’ve been reflecting on the connection between our works. The simplest and most incorrect answer is that of the vases.”

“I have worked with vases for twenty years, and bowls and vases permeate all my exhibitions. But this superficial resemblance is the most misleading. Morandi’s works are light. Christianity, humility and truth. My works are shadow, pride, ritual and secrets. Our art has nothing in common: indeed, they negate each other, as light negates shadow. Morandi’s works have no weight: they are woven from that celestial ether that, according to medieval theologians, permeates all existence. His paintings are a ray of light breaking into a dusty room.”

One of Antufiev’s small sculptures is tucked away in the studio, peeking timidly out from behind a stool, as if Morandi were painting yet another still life and had used it for inspiration.

The vase in the storeroom is entwined with snakes, which appear to be pecked at by birds. A piece of raw meat seems to be embedded in the bronze, whilst eyeless golems stand guard. Evgeny Antufiev has introduced a treacherous Serpent into the Garden of Eden of the shy Italian artist, who preferred to turn a blind eye to the horrors of life.

For Antufiev, this is not his first attempt at engaging in dialogue with the geniuses of the last century. In 2016, at the Manifesta in Zurich, he presented a project dedicated to Russian-American writer Vladimir Nabokov and his butterflies. The artist says that it is precisely through such a dialogue that one can learn something new both about oneself and about one’s imaginary interlocutor. And the more unexpected the combination, the more interesting the result may turn out to be.

Morandi’s paintings are uncontroversial and conspicuously detached from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. The museum on via Fondazza even has a display case designed to highlight the injustice of the rumour that Morandi was isolated in his retreat, unaware of what was happening in the rest of the world. Many artists paid homage to him with presents and letters, Fellini and Antonioni mentioned him by inserting his works in their films; actress Monica Vitti and film director Valerio Zurlini visited his house. The artist himself hardly ever travelled and lived either in Bologna or in the village of Grizzanda – where there is another Morandi museum and where another Antufiev’s exhibition ‘Frozen Light’ is being held. There have never been any exhibitions in this house before.

Antufiev says that the exhibition in the flat is dedicated to shadow, whilst the one in the summer house is dedicated to light. The two exhibitions thus take shape as a single organism divided into two complementary parts.

“There are artists who seem to belong to an already completed dimension of art history, figures whose work appears so perfectly sedimented that any direct comparison becomes almost impossible, – contemplates head of MAMbo (Museum of Modern Art of Bologna) Lorenzo Balbi. – Giorgio Morandi belongs to this category. His painting has reached a condition of absolute necessity: every object, every bottle, every tonal variation seems to exist within a suspended space that has gradually transcended historical time to become a mental, spiritual, almost metaphysical experience. To engage with Morandi inevitably means confronting an extreme measure of rigor, silence, and truth. It is precisely from this difficulty that the project conceived by Evgeny Antufiev emerges. Not a tribute, not a philological reinterpretation, not an attempt at formal assimilation, but a dialogue constructed upon incompatibility, distance, and the very impossibility of reconciliation. Antufiev rejects any easy parallel. The outward analogies – vases, objects, still life, composition – are immediately declared insufficient, almost misleading. The true proximity between the two artists is found not on the surface of forms, but in the radical way both interrogate the relationship between matter and presence, between the visible and the invisible, between time and memory”.

Morandi did not wipe the dust off the objects he painted, so that the light would reflect in a certain diffused way. To create a similar effect, Antufiev used aluminium, as well as silver and lead, and his vases and other objects reflect light as if they were covered in dust.

An exhibition in Bologna features a series of mosaics made from Italian travertine and black marble, which Antufiev created together with his wife, Lyubov Nalogina. The artist says that the series dedicated to the “shadow feeling” of Morandi etching and drawings and special geometry. These works echo Morandi’s engravings, which are displayed nearby; the mosaic seems to echo the lines of the drawings, and Evgeny Antufiev considers it a great stroke of luck that an early (1913) ink drawing by Morandi – an expressionist landscape – was secured for the exhibition.

“While preparing the exhibition, I constantly tried to find similarities. The more I visited museums, leafed through catalogues, and looked at his graphics and engravings. the more I heard a familiar whisper of shadow. The line in his engravings is fundamentally different. It is sharp, unsettling, at times prickly and angular. The exact opposite of the softness and fluidity of painting. If Morandi’s paintings are light, his engravings are shadow,” – explains Antufiev.

Russian artist had ties with Italy through the Maramotti Family Foundation, which acquired his works for its corporate collection in 2012. He has been represented by the Italian gallery Sara Zanin for over ten years. However, Antufiev prefers to live in the Moscow region and grow flowers at his beautiful country home. This is yet another detail that links him to Morandi.