The inauguration on October 15th at 4.30 pm at the Antonella Scarfone gallery
Pisa, October 2022. Paolo Medici will be the protagonist of the personal exhibition entitled "Texure: from paper to meat" which will be inaugurated on October 15 at 4.30 pm at the Antonella Scarfone gallery, on Lungarno Gambacorti 29, within the Renaissance walls of Palazzo Papanti.
Paolo Medici was born in Rome in 1955 and developed his artistic research in the seventies, straddling the direct experience of Corrado Cagli, of which he is a student, and that of Giorgio De Chirico who he attended together with other artists of the Roman school. The methodical study of the female figure together with the technical experimentation of frottage, lead it to be recognized at national and European level.
For the first time his works are exhibited in Pisa: over 50 works that are portraits of women (and men) in which the luminous complexion is obtained thanks to the skilful use of chiaroscuro and the frottage technique that allows him to obtain the depth sought.
“I have never used brushes - says the artist - my works are made with waxy oil pastels rubbed on sheets of thin paper, which thus allow me to bring out the matrix used, then subsequently coated.
Like Cagli, I too used the matrices until 2002, keeping them fixed under the paper, but over time, I have experienced that, by rotating some types of matrices, I was able to mix the colors, obtaining a more compact texture. This discovery gave me the possibility to realize the complexions of the bodies at their best ”.
In his journey in search of beauty, Medici also looks to contemporaneity and reinterprets in many of his works the melodies of the bodies of twentieth-century women elaborated by Modigliani: the homage to the Livorno artist is chosen as the symbolic image of this exhibition.
“The extreme modernity of Paolo Medici also translates into the“ Metamorphoses ”- explains curator Cristina Olivieri - in which he tells stories of Western women with an intriguing“ burqa ”of damask lace. The connotation of these veils superimposed on the faces is an artifice, a decorative quirk that represents the sensuality and elegance of a woman, whose beauty is camouflaged behind the gazes directed at the observer, but also in the pleasure of half-closed eyes that evoke the underlying and mystical eros, leaving room for the imagination ”.
In addition to this series of works, the artist joins the "Mademoiselles" portrayed with undergarments that recall the Renaissance ploy of hiding the forbidden parts of naked and disturbing bodies: that of Paolo Medici is a journey into the ancestral dimension of the configuration of a body and its value as identity, even investigated in the male faces of “Gypsy Architecture”.
“In his art, Medici seeks a pure Renaissance - concludes Cristina Olivieri in the critical text accompanying the exhibition - which goes beyond genres and feeds on absolute beauty, an enigma of flesh and spirit, body and soul, the supreme synthesis of human values”.
The exhibition will be open until November 30th from 4.00 pm to 7.00 pm. For information: info@antonellascarfonegallery.it Tel: 050-9914068
