Four Minutes After Sunset by Rudy Cremonini at Capsule Shanghai crafts a tender, introspective poetics of ambiguity, transformation, and the ineffable temporality of dusk.
Anchored in the ancient Greek notion of Kairos—the critical, opportune moment—and echoing Jungian metamorphosis, Cremonini’s paintings situate themselves at the liminal edge between presence and absence, day and night. The title serves as a quiet invocation: four minutes after sunset, where the known dissolves into uncertain tones, where experience slips into something intuitive and half-remembered.
The spatial structure of the exhibition, divided chromatically across four rooms, acts as both narrative and temporal device. Each gallery marks a moment—each hue, a shift in sentiment. It is a conceptual choreography, mapping the melancholic terrain of personal introspection. But rather than offering answers, Cremonini sketches emotional contours. His insistence on medium over image foregrounds a tactile sensitivity: painting becomes an act of negotiation, of allowing rather than constructing. The distorted, wavering subjects embody a particular sincerity—an acceptance of ambiguity as a form of truth.
Water, a recurring motif, threads the works with both lyrical and destabilizing energy. Its presence is not merely visual but philosophical—embodying both nurture and erosion. The inclusion of ceramic sculptures—his first foray into three-dimensional work—extends this exploration. The same vulnerability found in his brushwork translates through clay, echoing the Surrealists' automatic writing, yet with a distinct resistance to introspective narrative. Cremonini’s trust in material permits an authenticity that transcends conscious intent, embracing a poetics of emergence.
Four Minutes After Sunset invites viewers to confront the illusion of spontaneity in art and life. The porous borders Cremonini constructs are not voids of meaning, but vessels for ambiguity—a rare and delicate space where things might unfold without force. It is not resolution he offers, but resonance. In an age obsessed with precision and coherence, his work gestures toward a return to the obscure, the intuitive, and the deeply human.
