Paolo Chiasera: Frankenstein

For his exhibition at PSM Gallery, Chiasera likens himself to a kind of Doctor Frankenstein, assuming a similar, if proleptic procedure of collaging, suturing and hybridizing both on the canvas and in the minds of his viewers. Drawing pictorial inspiration from the 54 selected artists participating in Gallery Weekend Berlin, Chiasera has fused together motifs from the practices of different artists and generated mutant paintings. In doing so, he preempts the mnemonic morphological blurring that is bound to attend the exposure to so much art, in which works of art overlap and mutate in viewer’s memories. It’s as if, in the canny spirit of Manet, he is constructing the conditions of pictorial déjà vu, but with a weirdly phantasmal edge. Furthermore, using a technique of cast and mono-print on plaster mounted on canvas, he also conflates and adds the initials of the respective artists to the lower, right- hand side of each canvas.