galleria francesca kaufmann is presenting Pierpaolo Campanini’s second solo show. He was born in 1964 at Cento di Ferrara, where he lives and works.

Pierpaolo Campanini’s paintings appear as abstract settings in which extraneous bodies nestle. The neutral, often geometrically defined backgrounds enhance the solitude, the dwarfishness and stridency of the forms that occupy them. It is a stridency caused by the contradictory intimation of their being simultaneously at peace and at odds with everyday life. If each part of these objects can be extracted and defined and is evidently drawn from reality, the peculiar combination of shapes in which they are composed is puzzling and unsettling. And even though they certainly retain a certain degree of familiarity, sometimes a resemblance to other objects, sometimes a far-fetched anthropomorphism, they always remain a less-than-formed, modified or distorted reflection of what they recall. The ultimate significance of these bodies is that of mental constructions and of tools. In fact, their semi-rough assembly is directed by the thought of their translation onto canvas. This is further stressed by the meticulous choice of lights which Pierpaolo Campanini constantly engages in. These lights are never natural. Illumined by electric lights the paintings look sometimes stark, as if their light was that of a television, or purple-hued or darkening, almost irrevocably. Within this system, painting is the only way to unify such a capricious combination of instances. The objective and mathematical problem, which is at the basis of each of Campanini’s paintings, is the synthetic reproduction of a detailed analysis.

On the occasion of his second solo show at galleria francesca kaufmann, Pierpaolo Campanini has even stretched the idea of a painting custom-made for its subject. The impression one is left with on viewing the four paintings in the exhibition is that the process was finely calculated to fit the final effect. Not only are the canvases in different sizes and proportions according to the object which is portrayed but the technique differs both in the introduction of a tempera and the variations in the treatment of the oils. A careful analysis reveals how Campanini is leaving behind photographic representation in favour of a mode of painting that follows the nature of what is portrayed. Pierpaolo Campanini is pushing forwards the obsessiveness for measurements which has always characterized his paintings. He is doing so by extending the range of the controllable aspects of painting and not limiting control to the drawing aspect only.

The resulting odd harmony which ensues in the paintings originates from an amount of calculations that are difficult to imagine. For further information or photographic material please do not hesitate to contact the gallery.