Alberto Biasi. Politipi.

Dep Art Gallery is pleased to announce “Alberto Biasi. Polytypes”, the fourth monographic exhibition dedicated to the artist, born in Padua in 1937, one of the most emblematic figures of international optical-dynamic-art.

The exhibition, curated by Federico Sardella and organized in collaboration with the Archivio Alberto Biasi, focuses on the series of “Politipi” (“Polytypes”) works created by Biasi from the late Sixties onwards; in these works, besides capturing those typical elements that can generate perceptual, optical and dynamic tensions, the materials and structures are evidently governed by a certain pictoriality to the point of being both object and painted works at the same time.
The “Polytypes” are three-dimensional works consisting of several merged or overlapping elements that create effects of depth and movement through the use of materials, light and shadow, while always considering space: the space of the canvas and the painting. As Biasi himself said, “Art is not only about form, but also about energy and movement”. The “Polytypes” embody this concept, inviting the viewer to capture variation and expansion, to explore the relationship between artwork, space, colours and light.
The “Polytypes” series marks a crucial moment in Biasi’s artistic research, demonstrating his ability to create works imbued with an environmental spatiality that engage the viewer in a unique, interactive and immersive sensory experience. “My goal is to create a work that is not just an object, but an experience as well”, says the artist, establishing a method that, since his debut in the late Fifties, has evolved over the years without ever betraying its initial assumptions.

The choice to focus the exhibition on this group of works gives the public the opportunity to explore the depth and complexity of a series of such mysterious and sensual creations, which move between painting, object, relief and sculpture. These works can produce variable and ever new images, as well as places that can be perceived in the strict sense of the word, which in fact determine possible compressions and simultaneous spatial expansions that bring the image back within a perimeter, yet without being confined within its limits.
Just as a ‘polytype’ in typography or computer science also refers to the possible union of two or more characters for perceptual purposes, in Alberto Biasi’s “Polytypes” the sense of union, of unification, of overlapping, of crossing, of mimesis to the point of fusion, is developed in the juxtaposition of techniques and materials that fully express Biasi’s artistic commitment. Exploiting the possibilities and potential of an industrial, plastic and flexible material such as PVC, which is subjected to torsions that alter the regular vertical arrangement of the slats, together with painting, whose presence is undeniable, Biasi combines these two – apparently incompatible – conditions to create highly personal configurations and iridescent colours.
The exhibition, conceived in close collaboration with the artist, will be accompanied by the publication of a bilingual Italian-English volume containing all the artworks on display, as well as a long dialogue between Alberto Biasi and Federico Sardella, which took place in April this year in the artist’s Padua studio.

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