Alberto Castelli Biography
Alberto Castelli was born in Turin in 1970, in the transition from the 70s to the 80s, surrounded by an environment that does not reconcile the after-effects of well-being with a growing perceived social discord. Growing up in a family where art was seen as an escape from reality, Castelli spent many holidays visiting major international museums. His father, a painter and antiques dealer, passed on to his son a passion for art and a love for museums. “Me too” is the synthesis of the young Alberto in front of Théodore Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa. All of Alberto Castelli's work can be understood as a daily application and discipline of memory, a research carried out with the specific means of painting. A sort of family and individual mandate that is fulfilled within the studio, through a practice of "religiosity" and contemplation.
The atelier represents an island of tranquility and leads the artist to explore the voids as traces of a personal investigation. Castelli uses painting as a tool to represent fragments of dramaturgy and ghosts of a community. Photography is another medium used by Castelli to collect random fragments from everyday life, which he then transfers onto the canvas through the sensuality of the pictorial support. However, photography as such does not interest him. The atlas is mere accumulation. The transfer from photography to painting lies in the sensuality of the support and little in that of the subject. As in an elective relationship with all the fetishes of photographic pictorialism, the component of out-of-dateness breaks down in the sign, in the detail, in the cut. Because we can dialogue with past centuries, like Balthus, but no one can escape the contemporary. In summary, Alberto Castelli's art focuses on memory and personal research, addressing current events through an aesthetic interpretation of the world.
