A Painting Cycle – Luca Bertolo
Curated by Cecilia Canziani and Ilaria Gianni
May 3rd - 17th, 2012
Opening May 3rd, 2012 from 6.30pm
Nomas Foundation, viale Somalia 33, Rome
On Thursday 3 May, Nomas Foundation presents the last episode of A painting cycle, featuring Luca Bertolo. In his works – drawings, paintings, collages – the artist performs a reflection on representation and its tools.
Luca Bertolo's research maintains a conceptual approach, at the same time disclosing a specific attention towards materials and figuration, where language, analyzed in its transformation - defragmentation and reconstruction - through the medium of painting, assumes a pivotal role.
Luca Bertolo will be in conversation with Pier Luigi Tazzi, art critic and curator of a large number of exhibitions in Italy and abroad. Formerly professor at College of Architecture of Florenece University and Lecturer and Tutor in arts college in Europe and Asia, Pierluigi Tazzi is currently Chair of Lanfranco Baldi Foundation (Pelago), permanent curator of the project Spread in Prato, and professor at the Fine Arts Academy of Florence.
After A Performance Cycle (2010) and A Film Cycle (2011), again this spring Nomas Foundation's programme will be marked by a project taking the form of a cycle as a mode of presentation that aims to explore specific languages within art declined in their different nuances and forms.
A painting cycle reflects on painting, a language that the public tipically identifies as art tout court and that is today, increasingly gaining space, attention and momentum.
What does painting mean today? How did it change - if it has - in dialogue with the variety of media that in the past century artists have adopted? Is it still possible to speak about style, technique or use the term ‘representation’? With which awareness is painting addressed at the present moment?
These and many more are the themes of A painting cycle, which aims to confront the public with a dialectic of positions on a specific language rather than with a solution.
Every two weeks from March 8, chapter after chapter, Nomas Foundation becomes a picture gallery hosting conversations, workshops and a thematic library open to the public.
Through a selection of works, the five invited artists, offer different positions of the interpretation of painting, addressing specific aspects and key terms that will be discussed in a public conversation with an art critic invited by them.
As part of their presentation, the artists have been asked to indicate an art work /monument of the city that has had a particular influence within her or his artistic research, all of them together drawing a virtual map of the cultural heritage inscribed in the city of Rome.
In addition to this, A painting cycle is accompanied by a workshop lead by artist Alessandro Sarra, which intertwines with the exhibition programme and constitutes yet another point of view on what painting means today. The workshop Progettare un cielo offers a visionary approach through which to consider the very fabric of painting, and is organized in ten weekly appointments abridging Nomas Foundation, the artist’s studio, and some museums of Rome. The material produced during the workshop will be posted regularly on Nomas’ website.
Luca Bertolo was born in Milan in1968. After a degree in Science of Information and a period spent in London, he attended the Academy of Fine Art of Brera. From 1998 to 2004 he lived in Berlin and in 2005 in Wien. He currently lives in a small village of Alpi Apuane.
Solo exhibitions (selected): Il ritorno del Reale e Altri Imprevisti, SpazioA Gallery, Pistoia (2011); L’INVERNO ESISTE PROVE ED ESEMPI, Mars – Milano Artist Run Space, Milan; The Domain of Painting, Arcade, London (2009); La vita degli animali. Introduzione #1, Assab One, Milan (2007); La Repubblica delle Donne, Galleria De March, Milan (2006).
Group exhibition (selected): Difetto come indizio del desiderio, NEON Campobase, Bologna; Alarums and Excursions, Front Room Gallery New York; Meriggio a Carignano, Villa, Carignano (2011); The Library of Babel / In and Out of Place, 176/ Zabludowicz Collection, London; Impresa Pittura, CIAC Centro Internazionale d’Arte Contemporanea, Castello Colonna di Genazzano, Rome (2010); No More Than a Point of View, Prague Biennal; Im03, l’immagine sottile, Galleria Comunale d’Arte Contemporanea di Monfalcone, Gorizia; Italian Genius Now, Macro Future, Rome (2009); One or three ways to turn on the light, Villa Straeuli – Winterthur, Zurich; Fallen from an apple tree by mistake, Wilde Gallery, Berlin; Manual CC – Instruction for Beginners and Advanced Players, uqbar, Berlin (2008); Nessuna Paura. Arte dall’Italia dopo il 2000, Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato (2007).
Media partner: CURA