Glenda Cinquegrana Art Consulting is pleased to announce:
Opening: January 12th, 2023, at 7.00 pm
from January 13th to March 25th, 2023
From Tuesday to Saturday, from 3.00 to 7.00 pm.
Curated by Glenda Cinquegrana
With a Text by Rebecca Delmenico.
Glenda Cinquegrana Art Consulting is glad to present the solo show dedicated to Italian photographer Andrea Tonellotto (Padua, 1974). The exhibition goes by the title This Must be the Place and is accompanied by a critical text by Rebecca Delmenico. Through a collection of over 40 works, among which single Polaroids and mosaics, it gathers his most recent production dedicated to towns by the Italian artist.
As the text by Rebecca Delmenico explains In front of Andrea Tonellotto’s photographs any attempt to pigeon-holing the method of the artist into a logical scheme cease. He follows nothing but his feelings, rendering through these images an atmospheric narrative, where he goes back many times, in different periods, to places by which he is fascinated to and rediscovers and crystalizes those tastes impressions that remain unchanged, a sense of continuity that persists beyond change in the inevitable flow of the days.
The critic stresses how research is carried out by the artist from Padua, who, to build his Polaroid mosaics, visits the same places many times in order to find there atmospheric suggestions, emotional realities, and perspectives, which are each time different, capable of encompassing a view of a place which is the expansion of a poetical moment. As Delmenico stresses, the mosaical means, where the single image creates a greater shape, for Tonellotto is the fundamental linguistic tool: Tonellotto finds connections among places and feelings, and his Polaroid pictures, both single and in compositions prove it. They can evoke emotional symphonies because in that dimension, where an instant expands and time as a category ceases to exist, dwells the soul of the places resonating with that of the artist. At the root of his work, there is a very strong emotional inspiration, followed by a constructive stage by nature rational. Delmenico continues Tonellotto, while scouring these urban spaces at days, months, even years’ distance, recognizes immediately those signs that catch the eye, such as a colour, a theme, a play of light and he immediately freezes them, but it will be only at the end of the long process of collection of the images that the artist will see those connections and create the compositions in which he, first and foremost, finds himself.
On display we find a complete overview of the research by the artist divided into core themes, such as the London series dedicated to the English metropolis, rich in pop charm and bright colours; Tresigallo, his love declaration to architectural rationalism; finally, Silent Movie, which, developing the classical still life theme, is a homage to de Chirico’s metaphysics. Therefore, the show narrates with Tonellotto’s style, which is absolutely recognizable even in the pictorial influences of his images, a result not easy to achieve and the fruit of a great command of the use of Polaroids, whose film is very fragile if you think of the high sensitivity to light or to the weather and, time going by, the films themselves change. Nevertheless, at first sight, they could seem like photos that are all taken in the same moment while paradoxically years may have passed from one take to the other.
