The title of Paolo Patelli‘s exhibition is borrowed from a review that Gian Piero Vincenzo dedicated to him in 1989. In those years Patelli was forsomely painting large works starting from the size 100 x 70: a mixed media on paper where there is no lack of collage or some gash, all framed in a thin white or black frame with glass or Plexiglass. From the multiplication of that size, works up to 4 meters were initiated.
An artist of great experience, characterized by irrepressible research and continuous experimentation that distinguished different periods of his artistic production. But it was in the late 1980s that precisely “painting painting” took over, and he himself says:
I paint the concept of painting, I paint the act of painting, I’ve been painting the same painting for 30 years (and a little more), I paint how I write, I paint how Lester Young played sax (less well), I paint to destroy the space of painting, I paint to create my own, I paint because I’m cheerful, I paint because I’m sad, I paint so I won’t die (like everyone else), I paint because I love life. I don’t know what people will make of my painting or anyone else’s.
The exhibition presents precisely his most productive period when his works seduced the general public at Italian and international fairs. The works range from 1988 to 1991 with the aim of re-presenting today a way of being painting that is still relevant: physical, material, colourful, acted out.