Shades From The Shadow

LORENZO PUGLISI

Born in Biella, Italy in 1971. Lives and works in Bologna.

Lorenzo Puglisi’s paintings are the result of a pictorial research based on a strong interest in human nature and therefore in the mystery of existence urged by the obsessive attempt to portray it. Since 2015 his large canvases present references to art history and are related to masterpieces of the past filtered by his iconography.

His tactile paintings are characterised by the widespread use of black colour on the canvas which creates an absolute dark background, from this darkness there emerge volumes, faces and hands with vague outlines and features, consisting of vigorous brushstrokes sketching out the lineaments, those images are only recognisable (apart from the titles of the works referring to the original models) by their identical positions on the canvas and they bring to mind the great tradition of light and shadows as expounded by Leonardo, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Goya and Bacon, deconstructed details of their pictures appears to materialise through a dazzling white light that pierces the black background, as if they were relics, traces, memories or remains.

It is through these dazzling figures and incandescent details that Puglisi enters the living flesh of painting in order to seize the very magma of life, the mysterious vortex of being.