On May 16th Tazza Gallery in NYC presents “Essence,” new paintings by Italian artist
Alessandro Del Pero.
The show draws from two series of works that the artist has
created while living and painting in Harlem. The first series features what
appears to be his atelier. Del Pero’s background in architecture allows him to
create and command the space on his canvas with ease. Here the light appears to
be adventitious, as if coming directly from the viewer’s realm and it somehow
propels us, uninvited, into his private space and into the scene. What do we
find there? Props and objects
scattered in a seemingly random manner. Observe with care and you’ll discover
that there is nothing random about the objects or about anything in these
compelling compositions. These pictures are personal windows into the artist’s
psyche and each can be seen and read as a self-portrait; they can be enigmatic
but they are always intriguing.
For his Heads
series, a subject Del Pero has been exploring since he started painting, there
is a freedom of line and form that almost transfigures them into abstraction. The
heads seem to be in a state of auto transformation. They appear fleshy,
tangible but at the same time possessed by that intrinsic quality that can only
be called, Essence.
Commenting on
the show, Tazza Gallery Director Denis Arguedas said:
“I love Alessandro’s
ability to render without pretentions. He exorcises his canvas of any preconceptions
of aesthetics, conventional standards of beauty, traditional subjects and
rules. Things are presented as they are and even when they conform to their
nature there is in them, always, a second identity. He gives everything to the
observer but we cannot help to see that there is something else. It takes us a
moment to comprehend that the missing element is, perhaps, ourselves, the
viewer. His paintings are never static. We approach them and they grab us,
pulling us in, always amusing us like sirens under the allure of the drama created
by shadows, the contour of a hanging rope or the frustration and struggle of a
crashed piece of paper."
Tazza Gallery 547W 27th Street 533 NYC 10001
