Art Club #4 Paolo Chiasera

“Paolo Chiasera (Bologna, 1978; lives and works in Berlin) has approached a wide variety of means of expression that (…) condense into the ideal stratigraphic solution through which it has always manifested itself (…). The ‘nomadic canvas-based artist-run exhibition spaces’ (…) are exemplary of this dynamic. The Gypsotheca (…) presents itself as an ideal concretization of the ancient pictorial articulation, a kind of plastic materialization of the dream cultivated by the artist in Secondo Stile. Chiasera interacts with the space by interpreting the volumetric surfaces of the room (walls, pavement and ceiling) as if they were potential screens for his work, adding to the existing works (including the casts of Trajan’s column) which, in this context, might at first superficial glance recall layers of plaster detached from one frescoed room and temporarily placed in another. In reality, these are three paintings on canvas, the candid white of which is applied with a modulation of tone (…). On one of them are projected filmed scenes describing, in free sequence, rooms in the Villa, in particular the Studiolo and the Gypsotheca (…). The interlocutors involved are as numerous as the dialectical mechanisms they mediate. We see the artist of today (Paolo Chiasera) and those of the past (the often-unknown authors of the plaster casts and those of their original matrices), present time and the time of history (covering a time span that begins in Roman times and spans the 350 years of the academic institution), pictorial and sculptural techniques joined by cinema and installations, giving rise to a narrative succession rich in visual and literary effects (…).

ppp, Paolo Chiasera, May 2016