Archivio degli eventi / Events archive
16 maggio – 2 luglio 2008: Pierluca Cetera,
Euclidea
Mostra personale di
Pierluca Cetera, testi critici di
Alessandro Trabucco e Maria Chiara Valacchi.
Catalogo.
Inaugurazione venerdì 16 maggio 2008 alle ore 19
Luogo: Arte Boccanera, via Milano 128/130, Trento
Info: P/F: +39 0461 984206 M: +39 340 5747013
arteboccanera@gmail.com
Comunicato Stampa / Press Release
Venerdì 16 maggio 2008 alle ore 19 Arte Boccanera Contemporanea di Giorgia Lucchi inaugura la prima personale trentina di Pierluca Cetera, che si protrarrà fino al 2 luglio 2008.
La mostra presenta tre raccolte di dipinti: “Euclidea”, “Picnosi” e “Le Ore”. Tre diverse interpretazioni del rapporto tra visione e opera d’arte. Una vera e propria trilogia dello sguardo.
EUCLIDEA, OVVERO LA VISIONE DEL FILOSOFO.
In questo trittico, la pittura di Cetera rievoca peripatetiche "riflessioni" sulla riva del mare. Il titolo “Euclidea” allude chiaramente ai triangoli amorosi raffigurati nei dipinti. Una dea desnuda affiora dall’acqua e mina, con la sua carica erotica (si pensi al Simposio di Platone e al mito di Eros, che accende nell’uomo il desiderio di conoscenza), la placida routine di una coppia, che in questo caso simboleggia la dialettica filosofica. Studi di figure, schizzi e disegni presenti nell’allestimento illustreranno le fasi progettuali del lavoro.
PICNOSI, OVVERO LA VISIONE DELLO SPETTATORE.
L’allestimento fa interagire le due serie di dipinti, “Picnosi” ed “Euclidea”. Immersi in una mansueta dimensione bucolica, i personaggi raffigurati in Picnosi sembrano partecipare da spettatori alle “apparizioni” di Euclidea. La loro calma, in realtà, è solo apparente. Le immagini fanno presagire l’esplosione di una rabbia a lungo repressa.
LE ORE, OVVERO LA VISIONE DEL VOYEUR.
Qui, la visione assume connotazioni contrastanti e morbose. La serie "Le Ore" è un'installazione pittorica suddivisa in dieci polittici, in cui i dieci ritratti dell'artista - che indossa occhiali sempre diversi, da presbite a miope, con il progressivo ispessimento delle lenti, come a ripercorrere i decimi dell'occhio fino a culminare nella cecità - sono posti di fronte a dieci dipinti con altrettante scene pornografiche contornate da un bordo nero, come se fosse la cornice di un televisore.
Catalogo con testi critici di Alessandro Trabucco e Maria Chiara Valacchi.
All’inaugurazione di Trento sarà presente l’artista.
THE PERFECT NUMBER by ALESSANDRO TRABUCCO
According to some the perfect number is ‘five’, according to others it corresponds to ‘seven’; undeniably, though, in Western thought numerical perfection is associated with ‘three’. Perhaps because of religion (the Trinity), or thanks to geometrical-pagan matters (the equilateral triangle), number three has always been highly respected. Pierluca Cetera holds tradition and history in great esteem, so much so that we could rightly, and on multiple grounds, count him among the heirs of the ‘classical’ pictorial tradition. This is due, in part, to the technique he favours—that ‘oil on panel’ which we hardly ever hear of any longer—but also to his preference for careful coating executed through layering, which has become equally rare in our ‘flash of wit’ prone times. In an era characterized by various instances of Duchamp-cloning (the umpteenth sneer at a masterpiece from the past), or of hectic attempts at creating something ‘new’, at ‘revisiting’ things, trying to rethink past art in an intelligent and creative way can yield pleasant fruits. Especially if this rediscovery is accompanied by a full awareness of what is happening in contemporary art. Cetera thus retrieves a pure taste for painting—the full sense of the pictorial matter combined with a refined search for stroke and outline as the basic linguistic structures sustaining the entire pictorial composition. The artist thus becomes none but a lucid and ironic observer of everyday life, a unique caretaker of reality. He concentrates mostly on apparently commonplace scenes, like those painted by the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century old masters (Rembrandt, Hals, Vermeer, Jan Steen, Pieter de Hooch, and, in Italy, Pietro Longhi), which become his fantasy’s main nourishment and which he revises following a rather complex creative procedure. The artist, indeed, starts off quickly sketching a great number of drawings on plain paper sheets, a process which helps him outline the essential elements of the stories he wishes to tell. He is chiefly attracted by ambiguous, almost grotesque, situations whose main characters are common people unknowingly acting out their daily commedia dell’arte. Just as this theatrical genre was born in reaction to the elitist academic drama performed amateurishly in the various European courts, thus linking the profession of actor to people of predominantly low birth performing in the streets of towns and villages, the artist from Apulia focuses on his real life, on its events, mostly in search of the morbid and titillating aspects of human actions. An example of this search is represented by the series entitled ‘Le Ore’, referring to the well-known hard-core magazine from the late sixties which was quite widespread well into the eighties until online porn almost completely supplanted its printed version. In this series, which immediately precedes the new one produced for the one-man exhibition presented here, Cetera casts a peculiarly ironic look on the commonplaces and prejudices that centuries of psychological restrictions, supported by a certain religious fanaticism, have rooted deeply in the human brain. Thus the bespectacled protagonist of every polyptych in the series symbolizes the effects of an excessive recourse to autoerotic practices roused by the vision of people having sex. The progressive blindness slowly permeating the voyeur is the most immediate consequence of such ‘disorderly’ practices. With ‘Euclidea’ Cetera abandons the rather small size that characterizes the panels on which he painted the ascending progression of ‘Le Ore’ to instead produce three large paintings, each measuring 160x200 cm. Here the theme is again taken from everyday life, though it is re-contextualized according to a couple of typological structures of classical origin: the theme of the ‘beauty at the bath’ (with echoes ranging from the ‘Susanna and the Elders’ motif, to the impressionistic ‘Baigneuses’, to the adolescent girls painted by German expressionists) and that of the ‘birth of Venus’. The classical motif of the female nude in water has inspired a multitude of artists wanting to praise the eternal feminine. From mythological tales to the representation of the bath as an innocent and rather unassuming diversion, up to the lascivious shots of sexy icons taking a shower in Italian erotic movies of the seventies, the image of a female body immersed in water has always kindled men’s fantasy. In his three paintings, Pierluca Cetera depicts three separate moments having as protagonist three well-defined characters. ‘Three’ as a numeric presence (along with its above-mentioned cabalistic nuances) is the token of the conceptual structure on which the entire work is based. Its central feature is a young naked woman whose slender body splits the composition in two. Is her presence real or fictitious? In each of the paintings her expression changes imperceptibly going from ill-concealed awkwardness to uninhibited display of her forms to a smiling and almost kind-heartedly censorial posture. The other two characters, whose physical presence is only apparently more realistic, are a man and a woman wearing bathing costumes: their features are rather common and their gestural expressiveness is minimal. Their role is undefined, though we can well suppose they are a couple. The reference of the series’ title (‘Euclidea’) to a love triangle is thus brought full circle, even though the central figure seems to set up a visual dialogue with the viewer rather than with the two characters flanking her. Her presence, in fact, recalls the ghostly apparition of a mythical goddess. The marine setting, rather than being depicted realistically, is suggested by and perceived through the legs’ knee-high ‘cut’. The seaside represents for the artist <
PYCNOSIS 2008 di MARIA CHIARA VALACCHI
Pierluca Cetera exhibits for the first time a series of nine small paintings, nine short tales taken out of time, out of space. Couples, happy families, groups of friends: all sitting on the purity of the indefinite. The floor and background are milk-white, the light is chalky, suffused like that of faded photos. The arrangement of bodies vividly recalls a certain classical iconography, manifest references to well-known masterpieces of the past, such as Cezanne’s bathers, Giorgione’s country concert or Edouard Manet’s Le déjeuner sur l’herbe. The gaze of mute characters glares at the viewers or is absorbed by events closed inside the frame. The objects represented by Cetera are few and essential. They are clearly chosen with great care, to raise slightly the veil of a kind of bewilderment hanging about them. Fruit, empty glasses lead back to long gone country picnics, big totes and swimming costumes to carefree days at the seaside. Often space is cut out by a cloth, the tablecloth spread on the grass, a blanket which welcomes the bodies and gives them a background, which anchors them to something real, tangible, drawing them out from nothingness. There’s something sacred about the milky sheet on which men lie and children carelessly play. It reminds of a shroud good to dry tears, to gather the last moments, the hot spurts of vivid blood. The artist’s intimate visions of quiet paradises seem thus to forebode ill-omened events. This is suggested by the title of the works— Pycnosis —a scientific term which refers to the degenerative process of a cell’s nucleus immediately preceding its death. The cell’s nucleus represents metaphorically, and rather manifestly, a familiar circle, a group linked by feelings of love and affection. The artist reassuring tales of life in common reveal, though, disturbing implications. The eternal moment fixed by crystal clear portraits seems to portend the course of time and imply a number of consequences for natural and unnatural events, undo bonds of affection, finish off love turning it into an airy recollection framed by the whiteness of a panel spread with plaster. Cetera’s paintings resemble votive offerings, ex voto, where a scene depicted is fixed in time and space right before an event happens. There is no saint’s effigy, but it is still possible to perceive the fear and the need that induce human beings to provide a rational explanation even for the most normal of phenomena. Sacredness thus becomes carnal, the spirituality characteristic of religion becomes corporal, concealed in the gestures and gazes of people caught in their most intimate instants. While seizing the moment, Cetera fixes eternity. He paints time recurring to an ancient technique derived from the setting up of wooden panels in the Renaissance. He first spreads a primer coat made of plaster and rabbit glue, he then proceeds to lay out layers of colour which must blend in order to give life to the subjects’ complexion and to define certain details which he finally fixes under a glossy finish. The china clay preparation heavily surfaces. Similar to floating photos, the subjects are framed by the white contour. The viewer is forced to share with the artist the same point of view, to perceive the same details, to enjoy the same scene. At the moment of detaching the sticky tape that bounds the painting, Cetera feels pure pleasure. The finished work is enveloped by the unfinished opaque background. The world depicted is enclosed by a passe-partout, set, as if it was a precious stone, on the absence of colour. The small panels become not only life stories, but also painting lessons. All of the painter’s passages, from preparation to the finishing touches, are visible, discernable. In his painting style learned quotations share the scene with popular sayings, Eros with Thanatos, the sacred with the profane. These compositions are simple and bare only at first sight, but a closer look reveals that a multitude of elements are balanced in them: they are rich with references to Italian cultural traditions, to art history of the past and of the present. They are comparable to pictorial cells whose nucleus is in decay, replete with feelings, depictions of the eternally fleeting moments of a well-defined time.
