Pierpaolo Campanini

kaufmann repetto is happy to announce the first of a series of exhibitions in New York, opening on November 9th at 6 pm, with a solo show by Italian painter Pierpaolo Campanini.

The work of Pierpaolo Campanini is at the same time intimate and monumental. The sculptures assembled in his studio in a meticulous process of accumulation of objects and natural elements are, through pictorial mediation, rendered solitary creatures – inhabitants of a fictitious reality, both tangible and indefinite.

The space in which Pierpaolo Campanini's subjects are developed is an arena, where objects appear in a struggle to find a definitive form, a place in the world.

The paintings presented in Campanini's exhibition are situated between memory and desire, where vernacular monuments are ambiguous subjects that escape an unequivocal definition. Through the process of painting, they appear to dissolve in delicate gestures that aim to recover an original form. Here, the softness of fabrics wrap around a disparate mass of elements that alternate moments of tension with the abandonment of gravitational force.

In a kind of diametric symmetry, natural elements like leaves, roots, and twisted branches are represented through the memory of sculpture, the mediation of past models, and the re-elaboration of cultural tradition.

Monuments in forgotten squares, faded photographs, actors in an empty theatre, the refuse of ideas shattered in pieces: Campanini’s works unleash a feeling of abandonment. As in the opening lines of T.S Elliot's “The Waste Land” beauty, by way of dyscrasia, generates a silent pain: “April is the cruelest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain.”

Pierpaolo Campanini was born in 1964 in Cento (Ferrara), Italy where he lives and works.

Recent solo shows include Corvi Mora, London (2012); kaufmann repetto, Milan (2009); Blum and Poe, Los Angeles (2008); Salon 94, New York (2006). Recent group exhibitions include: “La Figurazione Inevitabile,” Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato; “Etc., Faces,” Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens; “Silences where things abandon themselves,” MSU, Zagabria, Croatia, “Etc.;” Le Consortium, Dijon; La Quadriennale di Roma; “VERNICE, Sentieri della giovane pittura italiana,” curated by Francesco Bonami, Villa Manin, Passariano (Udine), Italy; “Apocalittici e Integrati: utopia nell’arte italiana di oggi,” MAXXI, Museo Nazionale Delle Arti del XXI Secolo, Rome.

For further information please contact info@kaufmannrepetto.com

kaufmann repetto new york will be temporally located in the project space of Andrew Kreps gallery at 535 22nd street, alternating with Andrew Kreps' 2013/14 exhibition program.