New Art Exhibition “Essence” Explores Real Space, Head Space Occupied by Italian artist Alessandro Del Pero

The show draws from two series of works that the artist has created while living and painting in Harlem. The first series features what appears to be his atelier. Del Pero‘s background in architecture allows him to create and command the space on his canvas with ease. Here the light appears to be adventitious, as if coming directly from the viewer’s realm and it somehow propels us, uninvited, into his private space and into the scene. What do we find there?  Props and objects scattered in a seemingly random manner. Observe with care and you’ll discover that there is nothing random about the objects or about anything in these compelling compositions. These pictures are personal windows into the artist’s psyche and each can be seen and read as a self-portrait; they can be enigmatic but they are always intriguing.

For his Heads series, a subject Del Pero has been exploring since he started painting, there is a freedom of line and form that almost transfigures them into abstraction. The heads seem to be in a state of auto transformation. They appear fleshy, tangible but at the same time possessed by that intrinsic quality that can only be called, Essence.

Commenting on the show, Tazza Gallery Director Denis Arguedas said, “I love Alessandro’s ability to render without pretentions. He exorcises his canvas of any preconceptions of aesthetics, conventional standards of beauty, traditional subjects and rules. Things are presented as they are and even when they conform to their nature there is in them, always, a second identity. He gives everything to the observer but we cannot help to see that there is something else. It takes us a moment to comprehend that the missing element is, perhaps, ourselves, the viewer. His paintings are never static. We approach them and they grab us, pulling us in, always amusing us like sirens under the allure of the drama created by shadows, the contour of a hanging rope or the frustration and struggle of a crashed piece of paper.”

This is Alessandro Del Pero‘s second New York solo show. He will also be featured this spring in a solo show in Dusseldorf at Galerie T.

Tazza Gallery is open 12-6 Tuesday through Saturday with receptions every Thursday evening from 6-8.