Renato Leotta
14 Mar - 08 May 2016
RENATO LEOTTA
Piccola Patria
14 March - 8 May 2015
Galleria Fonti is pleased to present Piccola Patria, first solo exhibition in the gallery by Renato Leotta.
Renata Leotta focuses his research on the observation of the landscape and the architecture, thinking of the show as a narrative determined bythe continuity of day and night; a passage given by the sea and its impermanence.
The seaside is the artist’ studio; a work dimension which reflects on man and his ability to place himself in the sphere of the real andof the maturation of feelings. That thought is suggested by the artist as «a reaction to a psychic –impropriety- which reflects the characteristics of the occidental culture», indicating a slowdown and an invitation to the observation.
«Is it possible to stop a wave with a gaze, describing it in just one image? Time in its flow becomes an inhabitable place able to redefine the conventions that rule and define our life.
For several days in Sardegna I alternated the exercise of the observation of waves to the walks through the rooms of the Archeological Museum, the element joining the two experiences is the wind. A strong Maestrale hits the north-west side of the island and then it goes diagonally through the Mediterranean area, the people, and animals who inhabit it, and architectures which form it; modeling them.
A soft landscape, full of time, mixes itself with the inner landscape, a little homeland composed by primary elements; I thought in those terms about the work I have pursued in these years, considering the sea as a clock.
Sempre is a prophetic environmental work exhibited on occasion of the show in Napoli, composed by reliefs of the seaside and fluctuating sea-paintings.
I realized the first reliefs using sand in Catania wishing to lock a trace that testified my presence. I discovered for the first time in summer when I was young the form of a female body and I reproduced it modelling on the beach surface the curves reminiscent of the hips line but also of the tides, as a first exercise about architecture and memory.
On the cost between Cuma and Licola and then on the volcanic one of Portici, I reproduced some circles that are the reflection of the sun going from the surface of the sea to the water’s edge.
The exhibition space of the gallery is divided in two specular volumes by a double arch recalling the architecture of Angiolo Mazzoni and his studies on Ernesto Basile in the period he was planning the post office in Palermo and the boarding area for ferries in Stazione Marittima in Messina. I thought to use the natural light opening the two windows placed at the end of the second room of the gallery to dilute the display and the external space in the different phases of the day and the night.
Some canvases realized with salted paper move on the walls: the movement, regulated by a mechanical system, puts in motion the space, reworking a participate perception in which the cliché of fruition and contemplation of the pictorial support fall down. The paper slides along the walls, recalling a subtended thought and the sails of a boat.»
Piccola Patria
14 March - 8 May 2015
Galleria Fonti is pleased to present Piccola Patria, first solo exhibition in the gallery by Renato Leotta.
Renata Leotta focuses his research on the observation of the landscape and the architecture, thinking of the show as a narrative determined bythe continuity of day and night; a passage given by the sea and its impermanence.
The seaside is the artist’ studio; a work dimension which reflects on man and his ability to place himself in the sphere of the real andof the maturation of feelings. That thought is suggested by the artist as «a reaction to a psychic –impropriety- which reflects the characteristics of the occidental culture», indicating a slowdown and an invitation to the observation.
«Is it possible to stop a wave with a gaze, describing it in just one image? Time in its flow becomes an inhabitable place able to redefine the conventions that rule and define our life.
For several days in Sardegna I alternated the exercise of the observation of waves to the walks through the rooms of the Archeological Museum, the element joining the two experiences is the wind. A strong Maestrale hits the north-west side of the island and then it goes diagonally through the Mediterranean area, the people, and animals who inhabit it, and architectures which form it; modeling them.
A soft landscape, full of time, mixes itself with the inner landscape, a little homeland composed by primary elements; I thought in those terms about the work I have pursued in these years, considering the sea as a clock.
Sempre is a prophetic environmental work exhibited on occasion of the show in Napoli, composed by reliefs of the seaside and fluctuating sea-paintings.
I realized the first reliefs using sand in Catania wishing to lock a trace that testified my presence. I discovered for the first time in summer when I was young the form of a female body and I reproduced it modelling on the beach surface the curves reminiscent of the hips line but also of the tides, as a first exercise about architecture and memory.
On the cost between Cuma and Licola and then on the volcanic one of Portici, I reproduced some circles that are the reflection of the sun going from the surface of the sea to the water’s edge.
The exhibition space of the gallery is divided in two specular volumes by a double arch recalling the architecture of Angiolo Mazzoni and his studies on Ernesto Basile in the period he was planning the post office in Palermo and the boarding area for ferries in Stazione Marittima in Messina. I thought to use the natural light opening the two windows placed at the end of the second room of the gallery to dilute the display and the external space in the different phases of the day and the night.
Some canvases realized with salted paper move on the walls: the movement, regulated by a mechanical system, puts in motion the space, reworking a participate perception in which the cliché of fruition and contemplation of the pictorial support fall down. The paper slides along the walls, recalling a subtended thought and the sails of a boat.»