Rue du bac, 2010 : Alessandro Papetti
Duration: 14 June 2010 – 17 July 2010
Participating Artists:
Alessandro Papetti
Indagine sul movimento
June 14th – July 17th
Opening Reception/Artist Talk – Wed June 16th, 2010 6 – 9 pm
Please take a look at an interview done by The Vancouver Sun while Alessandro Papetti was visiting: http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/Video+Alessandro+Papetti+Exhibition+Indagine+Movimento/3173722/story.html
Buschlen Mowatt is pleased to present the much anticipated Indagine sul movimento by renowned Italian painter Alessandro Papetti from June 14th - July 17th, 2010. This collection of new work is Papetti's first Vancouver show since his sold out exhibition in 2006. Featured in the 2003 Venice Biennale, Papetti has caught the eye of collectors and art critiques worldwide. Thank you to the Istituto Italiano di Cultura for the generous support.
Alessandro Papetti was born in Milan in 1958. In the years between 1980 and 1986 he was engrossed in research and busy organizing his first solo exhibitions. In 1988 Papetti began taking part in broader events in public spaces in Italy. Between 1988 and 1990, Papetti’s art focused on the theme of Portraits Seen From Above, a cycle on which art critic Giovanni Testori wrote an important article in 1989 for the leading Italian daily Corriere della Sera. This wide-angled vision of reality was followed, between 1990 and 1992, by the detail-oriented paintings called Finds, an analytical study of form, and the traces left by time on workshops and factory interiors. In 1992, Papetti intensified his research into industrial archaeology, as witnessed by a number of exhibitions, among which was his 1996 show at the Civic Museums of Villa Manzoni in Lecco.
Dividing his time between Milan and Paris, Papetti’s focus leaned toward interiors and portraits, with particular focus on studies of nudes. His research, along with a need to “get out”, and approach the “container” with a different mindset, brought him in 1998 to paint the cycle of works called Water, first exhibited at Milan’s Galleria Forni in 1999. Bodies suspended in still swimming pools, or - as in the Night Swimming series - caught in the instant before sinking in the blackness of a sea illuminated only by the livid light of the moon were among his first images of persons outdoors.
The Shipyards were born of his new pictorial focus on industrial locales. in 2002, Papetti exhibited the landscapes of industrial ports, dry docks and gigantic hulls, along with a group of large faceless nudes. These bodies of ships and humans were expressed side by side in their greatness and fragility. Between 2003 and 2004, the painter was invited to take part in several collective shows in museums, including one devoted to Testori in Milan’s Palazzo Reale and another commissioned by widely respected critic Vittorio Sgarbi. In addition, they were on view in several public spaces throughout Italy.
In 2005, Papetti took part in the exhibit Miracle in Milan at the Palazzo della Ragione and The Contemporary Italian Landscape at Gubbio’s Palazzo Ducale.
In the same year, the Fondazione Mudima organized a first retrospective of his works, titled The Discomfort of Painting, in which Papetti exhibited paintings from the previous 20 years, selecting works from as far back as the Testori-inspired figures seen from above, down to the most recent paintings on the theme of the city. Six months later, the exhibition titled The Belly of the City was inaugurated. These are quick “portraits” of urban landscapes seen through streets and squares, and in front of people and buildings where life seems to flow immovably, and where windows represent the transition between the inside and the outside; between the secret inner life and the life that must be shared in the chaos of a rapidly running space. Parcels of time and places, which were represented in the show essentially by the two opposing themes of external-internal.
In all these years, Papetti has periodically revisited his past painting cycles. His interest in industrial archaeology has led him to continue researching both the manner and the subjects, and also to produce a series of paintings dedicated to former industrial plants of French automaker Renault, which were exhibited in 2007 at the Musée des Années Trente in Paris, in a show called Ile Seguin. The same theme is the focus of a show currently being prepared at Moscow’s Museum of Architecture.
Papetti has worked with many imporant critics and museums worldwide. In 2007, Sgarbi invited Papetti to take part in Milan’s Palazzo Reale exhibition Italian Art – 1968-2007 Painting. In 2008, he was included in the show The New Italian Figuration. In 2009, Papetti participated in the collective shows The Soul of Water, at Venice’s Ca’ Pesaro, curated by Angelo Crespi, Elena Fontanella, and Cosimo Damiano Fonseca, and No Landscape, at Busto Arsizio’s Fondazione Bandera, curated by Luca Beatrice. In September, 2009, Milan’s Palazzo Reale hosted his solo show The Cycle of Time, an installation of three paintings mounted on circular structures measuring 11 feet in height and 26 in diameter; the spectators were invited to enter these structures to view the canvasses, which dealt with the themes of water, forests, and wind. The show was curated by regognized critic Achille Bonito Oliva.
Dynamic Spaces is the title of his first solo exhibition currently showing in Tokyo, Japan.