Curator: Elena Volpato
From 15 June until 8 September 2024, CEAAC presents a survey of the work of the Italian painter Luca Bertolo across two venues in Strasbourg and Meisenthal.
Luca Bertolo (b. 1968 in Milan, lives and works in Seravezza) is one of the most influential painters of his generation in Italy. He is widely respected not only for his painting practice, which challenges the very notion of pictorial style, but also for his writings and his dedicated work as a teacher at the Bologna School of Fine Arts.
Hesitation is a central concept in Bertolo’s work. In Strasbourg, a monographic exhibition will offer an overview of his practice through a vast corpus of works from his main series of paintings of the past two decades. In Meisenthal (Moselle), several series of drawings and photographs produced between 1992 and 2022, representing a lesser-known yet fundamental aspect of his creative research, will be displayed in a former painter’s studio.
Taking place simultaneously in two venues in the Grand Est region, this two-fold exhibition evidences Bertolo’s conception of painting as a practice in suspension, reflecting the artist’s reluctance to explicate the subject of representation and his predilection for oblique perspectives and multi-layered images that steer clear from any assumed form.
In partnership with GAM – Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin.
The project is supported by the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture under the Italian Council program (12th edition, 2023), which aims to promote Italian contemporary art worldwide.
Luca Bertolo (b. 1968 in Milan) lives and works in Seravezza, Tuscany. After studying computer science at university, he graduated from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan in 1998. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions at SpazioA, Pistoia (2022); Mart, Rovereto (2018/19); MAN_Museo d’arte Provincia di Nuoro, Gavoi, Sardinia (2017); Arcade, London (2017); and Marc Foxx Gallery, Los Angeles (2016). Most recently he has taken part in the exhibitions Sul principio di contraddizione, GAM, Turin (2021), and Le realtà ordinarie, Palazzo de’ Toschi, Bologna (2020). In 2018 was published I baffi del bambino (The Child’s Moustache), a collection of his writing about art and artists. In 2022, he edited the Italian version of the essay On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art by the American critic and art historian J. Elkins for Johan & Levi Editore. His works can be found in the collections of Centro Pecci, Prato; Mart, Rovereto; and GAM, Turin. He teaches painting at the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna. He is represented by SpazioA, Pistoia and Arcade, London.
Elena Volpato is an art historian and curator at GAM – Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Turin. In 1999, she set up Videoteca GAM, the first public collection of artists’ videos and films in Italy. Since 2009, she has been in charge of the museum’s contemporary collections. In 2019, she curated the new display of the collection entitled Pittura Spazio Scultura: Works by Italian Artists in the 1960s and 80s. She has curated numerous exhibitions, including Cronostasi: Filmic Time, Photographic Time (2009), All the Memory of the World (2010), devoted to the complexity of historical knowledge in relation to images, Sul principio di contraddizione (On the Principle of Contradiction, 2021), and Hic sunt Dracones with Chiara Camoni and Atelier dell’Errore (2022). She has organised numerous solo exhibitions by artists including Ian Kiaer, Martha Rosler, Eva Marisaldi and Paolo Icaro, and has co-curated surveys of artists’ videos for various international institutions such as Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and Tate Modern in London.
7 rue de l’Abreuvoir – 67000 Strasbourg
Opening
Friday 14.06.2024, 6.30 pm
Visit
Free admission
Wednesday to Sunday : 2 pm › 6 pm
Closed on public holidays
Atelier Meisenthal
2 rue du Général Frère – 57960 Meisenthal
Opening
Saturday 15.06.2024, 1 pm
Visit
Free admission
Open by appointment only
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