Lorenzo Puglisi, exposition personnelle

Guest curator: Mark Gisborne

"References to empty a special general resonance in the black paintings of Italian painter, APT artist Lorenzo Puglisi since it opened vacuum is punctuated in order to be filled. At the same time, filling the void in his case, has a resonance French special in Paris, where the renowned Yves Klein exhibited his work and, subsequently, made his famous, psychological and semi-literal "leap into the void." [...]

Achromatic conditions infinite darkness and whiteness are the founding stages of materiality that shape and direct the paintings Puglisi. But as the black and white set are common metaphors of creative clarity, and therefore are necessarily referring to states of human vision, it is no surprise that for Puglisi, materiality, combined with the history of art are the fundamental considerations in the center of his artistic practice. The achromatic use of black, be it for night scenes or for forms of self-expression, has a long history, and black, as matter or conscience, as a substance or metaphor, as the continuous appearance and mental well integrated the work of this Italian artist. [...]

The ghostly silhouettes that can be partly identified in Puglisi's paintings are often assumed to embody their self-proven psychic doubles. These are spectral apparitions that have a presence and historical relevance as autonomous paintings and are thus complex and opaque metaphors preexisting paintings. [...]

While on one hand there is in his work a fascinating sense of baroque blackness, the artist claims that "more strange is the head, the more the background is dark," there may have to the other an indirect allusion to the skulls expressive imagery of vanities, through the brushstrokes and the thickness of the paint applied to the knife allusive heads shown. [...]

Influence embracing opaque pictorial qualities of sfumato (blurry, hazy or blurred) from the Baroque period is freely recognized by Puglisi. As he said: "I was very touched by the question of darkness in the painting of the seventeenth century. "The darkness represents both a specific convention in the history of art in itself, as it implies aesthetic continuity for the artist. [...]

Shadows and darkness have an obvious affinity with the void, as the motombre is another term for appearances, hidden visions emerging from the darkness and perpetual guardians of mythical underworld. It is therefore no surprise that the history of painting is filled with ghosts living and heavy presences that inhabit the consciousness and daily practice of an artist's studio. It is both a cosmic and a common place - views that run daily life of the artist and the spectral possibilities of a next expressive world. "

Excerpts from the essay "Ghosts in the void" Mark Gisborne, January 2016