“TERRESTRIAL VISIONS”

“The 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.”

– Cristiano Pintaldi

Gillman Barracks

Coming direct from a greatly successful show in New York, Cristiano Pintaldi’s new exhibition Terrestrial Visions will be presented here at our gallery in Gillman Barrack, Singapore. The exhibition of the Italian artist explores his personal and affective response to the pandemic. His most recent series is the result of an investigation, which lasted over two years, and focused on the concept of escaping reality. Covid has changed the world for the whole human race. For the first time, we are all involved in the same situation and that has made humanity more united. During lockdown, TV screen became even more important, and was a mean to ‘return’ to normality, at least through the vision of the virtual world.

Pintaldi’s research reveals our complex relationship with the environment, and 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.

Over twenty works will be on display at Mucciaccia Gallery at Gillman Barracks. Pintaldi paints with only the three RGB colours, red, green and blue on a black canvas, placed together in the same way in which the pixels are arranged to create an image on the television screen. The subject matters are drawn from popular culture, TV programmes and cartoons, ranging from actors, actresses, movie’s frames, photographs found on the Internet. In this particular case, the subjects are no longer something that is outside our realm, but rather are something that has settled within us during these past but still recent months.

Cristiano Pintaldi was born in Rome in 1970. The artist’s pictorial research is based on the reconstruction of visual space obtained through a procedure similar to that of the video imaging. He paints pixels using only the three primary colours, red, green and blue. Technically, the artist works on three separate monochrome paintings, one for each colour, using three specifically built masks, one for each colour. The pixels that Pintaldi reproduce on the canvas are painted by hand using spray paint. Only at the end of the process, the assemblage of the painted pixels gives shape to the image. The most complex part of his research is having to paint the picture without ever being able to see it completely, except when the work is finished.

 Gillman Barracks