• PAINTING
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Gianluca Crudele
  • PAINTING
  • WORDS
  • ABOUT

Curatorial Note:
Mente Morbida is the very first oil on canvas series by Gianluca Crudele, also known as Barlo.

In this series the Italian artist, known in Hong Kong for his street art projects, questions his usual creative languages, looking to more traditional methods of painting. Oil painting served as a vehicle to express a more profound vein of his consciousness, aligned to the inner rhythm of his mind. While resisting the pressures of more fashionable aesthetics, a direction chose by many other artists sharing a similar ‘street’ background, this body of work yet manages to result surprisingly fresh and contemporary.

Hidden in each painting are hints to a vast cultural background, capable of combining clear references of European philosophers, spanning from Heraclitus to Nietzsche, with the stimuli absorbed through the recent years spent in Hong Kong - where the dominating practical and materialistic attitude altered profoundly the artist’s perspective to the world. Visually, Crudele skilfully manages to reference Italian artists and movements of the twentieth century - the metaphysical works of painters such as Giorgio De Chirico, Gino de Dominicis and Lorenzo Bonechi above all - without ever falling into the trap of trivial repetitions.

However do not be misled into thinking that the artist’s work is merely a sequence of quotes from a long gone past but a rather fertile ground where the germs of modernism influence and inform a subtle commentary to the contemporary human condition and the places we live in. His surprising technical ability merging with an introspective and intimate approach, resulted in a rich series whose diverse subjects live in a world of suspended time made of hidden symbols, messages and shades touching the most profound cords of the viewer’s soul. The shadows, in works such as City man, Ruins or Amor Fati, are the true carriers of meaning: the vehicle expressing a disquiet and malleable mood, the metaphysical state where form and content coincide, transporting the artist towards the uncharted territories of his own mind. In these works, Crudele translate to a powerful visual form his more private and impenetrable character, thus allowing the spectators to get a glimpse of his inner nature.

Mente Morbida becomes a state of the convalescent mind shared between the artist and the spectators where memories and images of the past - both of the artist and the public - return concretely and without any warning to appear in the reality. (Riccardo Chesti)

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