Simone Berrini
The Odyssey Within
December 15 - January 5, 2010
Reception:
Thursday December 17, 2009 6-8 PM
Press Release
Synthesizing the bizarre jumble of experiences in contemporary life is the humble goal of Simone Berrini’s appropriately hybrid paintings. With nods to Pop art, comic drawings and portraiture, the northern Italian painter often depicts animals, though his subject is unmistakably human. Presented out of context, in voids and against gaudy patterned wallpaper, Berrini’s animals are also gangsters, fishermen, hippies and Rastafarians. His monkeys, cats, dogs, cows, manatees and more all pose for the viewer, offering themselves as tableaux of familiar artifacts and sights turned into something decidedly unfamiliar.
Though realist in style, the subjects in Berrini’s paintings are defiantly bizarre. Beneath the funny and colorful play of mashed together memories, images, pop culture allusions and distant experiences, he is after some intangible truth. Berrini uses his observational and humorous paintings to figure out how we make sense of the uniquely rich lives we have the privilege of living. Made from snippets of contemporary culture, his paintings use the lexicon of daily life to ask about its deepest truths.
Artist Statement
"M'innamoravo di tutto" (I was falling in love with everything) said the great Italian poet and songwriter De Andrè ... I want to get all I can from this life. My path through life experiences constant evolution, as each external stimulus is a cause of mental re-engineering. I have always lived in contact with different people, from the restaurant where I grew up, through schools, the Academy, my holidays... This allowed me to enrich each time with my creative capacity. Even my techniques of creation are in perpetual evolution. I began with comics and after theater, lights, music and performance, I now focus on painting. What unifies the entire journey and my artistic research to date is the ironic eye which draws from the stimuli of the world and which impacts on my artwork.
Invitation to the exhibition
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Artists in this exhibition
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