The exhibition at MARCA - Museo delle Arti di Catanzaro), titled Paesagginterni (Interior Landscapes), presents a selection of 50 works executed over the past two years by Alessandro Papetti.
Organized by the Rocco Guglielmo Foundation and the Catanzaro region, the show curated by Marco Bazzini features oil paintings on canvas and mixed-media works on paper including, for the first time, the cycle of landscapes. It marks a new stage in an ongoing research, as reflected in the title itself: a neologism combining the words "landscape" (paesaggio) and "interior" (interno)-two distinct pictorial genres in art. Indeed, these latest canvases - which open onto horizons with a naturalistic feel, even though they depict mental rather than natural spaces - stem from a need to break free from the physical limits and constraints that defined the painted environments of his earlier series.
As Marco Bazzini notes: "Rather than depicting a single subject, Papetti is now focused on creating atmospheres, focusing on the void that only painting can fill; for what is painted does not always align with the mental barriers through which we perceive the world. Through these landscapes, Papetti seeks to explore the very possibility of generating a form of thought that mirrors the world. This is why the human figure - a hallmark of various phases of his career, such as the early portraits praised by Testori - never appears in these canvases. There is no mirror for the viewer, no drama with which to identify."
The exhibition also marks Alessandro Papetti's debut in the field of sculpture, by revealing his first work, a bronze female nude displayed in dialogue with a canvas depicting the same subject.
