Paola Angelini
Due to regional Covid 19 restrictions in Oslo, the gallery will not be open during regular gallery hours. Visitors are welcome to contact us by email on galleri@brandstrup.no to safely schedule a private viewing.
It is with great pleasure that Galleri Brandstrup presents “Biography of a Painted Table”, our first solo exhibition with Italian painter Paola Angelini.
The show is made of 17 paintings, and is split into 2 segments. The first is painted traditionally with oil painting on canvas, while the second is characterised by stitched canvases, worked with several layers of color.
Most of the paintings are newly created and made after a residency period at Cà Pesaro Museum in Venice, when the museum was closed due to COVID restrictions. The empty museum gave Angelini the unique opportunity to autonomously move alone through the rooms.
In this period she was able to up close and undisturbed study and observe the paintings of some of the Italian masters that has been a part of Angelini’s artistic imagery since the very beginning of her career; Felice Casorati (1833-1963), Scipione (1904-1933), Giorgio De Chico (1888- 1978), and many others.
The museum itself became a vessel of inspiration, first spontaneously, then through further reworking, observation and re-painting layers upon layers. Angelini proceeded to move her body of work created in the museum back to her studio, for to dismember, cut, resew and cover them. As a result, several of the paintings created at the museum remained only in the memory of the atmosphere in which they were painted. Other paintings were studied in their choice of palette and chromatic diversities. This can be seen in Angelini’s use of warm red tones, browns and dirty whites, inspired by the great painter Scipione and his choice of palette. Hence the artist’s choice of palette in the works created at Cà Pesaro Museum has shifted from her previous works; taken with her from residency at the Museum are often the colours favoured by Italian masters.
In the exhibition “Biography of a Painted Table” there are also paintings drawn from the artist’s daily life, which has been reinterpreted, decontextualised and that has become tiles to evoke lights, spaces and composition that Angelini is known for. The exhibition title is taken from two of the paintings presented in the show, which both represent this process; her work stimulated through imagery drawn from her own life, as well as images collected from art history, for then to be displayed upon an imaginary table as a story.
The works displayed in “Biography of a Painted Table” were born in the particular historical moment of isolation that many of us are experiencing today. This gave Angelini a chance to delve into her work uninterrupted for months on end, often simultaneously working on canvases resulting in a strong read thread running through them; a common intention. Although some of Angelini’s beloved subjects seen in her past work, make their appearance in some of the works displayed in “Biography of a Painted Table”, they do so with a new symbolic value; often suspended, sculptural and static.
Angelini has received various awards, among others the Level 0 award during Art Verona (2014) selected by Mart Museum of Rovereto. In 2014 and 2016 she participated at the Artist in Residency program at Nordic Artists’ Centre Dale (NKD), Norway, as well as the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa residency in Venice. Among her solo shows are; Le forme del Tempo, curated by Veronica Caciolli, Museo Palazzo Pretorio, Prato (2017), La Conquista dello Spazio, Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino (2017), Regio, curated by Arild H.Eriksen, Galleria Massimodeluca, Mestre – Venice (2014); Landskapet, end of residency exhibition Nordic Artists’Centre Dale (NKD), Norway (2014); Blue Memory, Rod Bianco Gallery, Oslo (2012).