Exhibitions
Exhibition through February 1st, 2020
“I decontextualize. I juxtapose. I reconstruct.”
Alessandro Painsi
Untitled, 2020
oil and spray on fabric collage
mounted on wall
Alessandro Painsi
Untitled, 2020
oil and spray on cotton
160 x 130 cm
Alessandro Painsi
Untitled, 2020
oil and spray on canvas mounted on cardboard
2 x A3
Alessandro Painsi
Untitled, 2020
spray on fabric collage
160 x 130
Painsi’s works are all about deliberately breaking canonical rules and creating startling compositions. He unites painting and collaging to make pieces that gain a corporeal dimension through their materiality. He never limits his art to classical canvases using instead humble materials: scraps and rolls of raw cotton, velour, jute or denim. In a pure intuitive act Painsi works with brushstrokes that are somehow dimensionalized, given depth, in creating lines, blotches of color and the ever-present words, names and letters on textiles that lie flat on the floor or are clipped on the wall. The accumulation of elements and forms is simultaneously being constructed and deconstructed, resulting into cartographic structures that get obscured with dynamic gestures of scribbling. Painsi’s handling of words and letters is to be understood within Futurism tradition of Carlo Carrà and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who’s “parole in libertà” and flowing typography had farfetched impact on modern art.
In Painsi’s work words and letters are totally abstract and reduced to mere geometrical forms and lines, freed from their semantic meaning. Like in many Basquiat paintings the stiching motive has a prominent part but is carried out by Painsi physically: he cuts the painted/sprayed textiles and stiches them haphazardly with thread and needle into new arrangements. In the series “As a matter of principle” Painsi went into fundamentals both in form and content. The pieces are executed solely in spray and hand-sewn into collages. In terms of color he chose to stay within red, blue, yellow and white: the primary elements and origins of all colors. The words he used reflect his preoccupation with core issues and notions that are relevant and determining for contemporary society: xenophobia, generation, adventure, presidency. Like the words in these paintings, core principles of society are at a cross-road and are being globally deconstructed and redefined – Painsi’s work reflects this mindset- reshaping. Both the work and the narrative within it exist in a liminal space, between abstract and figurative.
Alessandro Painsi
spray on fabric collage
160 x 130 cm
Alessandro Painsi
spray on fabric collage
160 x 130 cm