TERRESTRIAL VISIONS

Cristiano Pintaldi

Mucciaccia Gallery New York

November 11, 2021 – January 11, 2022

Why the title?

This title summarizes two fundamental components of my research: the collective vision that characterizes our era and the awareness of being terrestrial, to belong to planet Earth. I have always represented in my work the idea that the universe, with all that it contains, is about to become a part of our reality more than it has ever been; a reality in which we are only a part, the terrestrials, with our unique characteristics, our emotions and our personal and shared dreams.

In this historical moment in which we are living, tv screens produce a virtual reality that is shared in the same way and from the same point of view by all humans, in contrast to what had always been before now, that of the vision as a unique experience, often unrepeatable and not sharable. Hence the title: Terrestrial Visions.

What are the reasons behind the choice of the subjects?

For the past two years, my work has focused on the concept of escaping reality. Covid has changed the world, and not just the world of our neighborhood, for a few individuals, but the whole human race. For the first time we were all involved in the same situation and that made humanity more united. In these last couple of years the tv screen became more important than ever; we have been forced to stay in our homes, we greatly increased the number of hours spent in front of a video; above all, cinema and its new derivatives were the only means to see and ‘live’ what we used to consider our normal life. We felt the need to ‘come back’ to normality at least through the vision of the virtual world. These paintings are children of that moment.

I have always used pixels and painting as conceptual elements that could represent the reality we are living in, together with images that represent my idea of an epochal transition. In this case, the subjects I have chosen – faces, movie’s frames, photographs found on the internet – are no longer something that is outside of us, but rather something that has settled within us in these past but still recent months. Those images are the ones that managed to make us escape from what felt like a prison, to let us return, at least virtually, to our old lives.

Your paintings look like a photograph, that has been elaborated on a computer and then printed. I know they are hand-painted instead, how do you make them?

Yes, they are painted in pixels – the elementary particle of every screen – Red, Green and Blue. Technically, I work on three separate monochrome paintings, one for each colour, using three specifically built masks, one for each colour. Only at the end of the process, the assemblage of the painted pixels will give shape to the image; the most complex part of my research is having to paint the picture without ever being able to see it completely, except when the work is finished, because I always have to work separately, with only one colour at a time.

It may seem strange but even today digital printing techniques are unable to produce a colour with the same qualities as acrylic paint, the picture cannot be produced or reproduced mechanically and this makes painting the only means to make what we see, exist.

Exhibition:
TERRESTRIAL VISIONS – Cristiano Pintaldi

Artist info

Dates:
November 11, 2021 – January 11, 2022

Location
520 West 24th Street New York, NY 10011
For more information please contact
newyork@mucciaccia.com