“Phrases supply no assist when I attempt to discuss my portray”. It’s the primary sentence my eyes fall upon as I randomly open a set of writings by Italian artists of the final century: the phrases are Burri’s, written in 1955. Seventy years later, phrases don’t assist me both, when I attempt to clarify Giulio Bonfante’s portray to myself. So, I look intently at his works.
They seem to me like magnified particulars minimize out from a shared imaginary—the cartoon world of The Simpsons involves thoughts—till they flip into autonomous topics: symbols. A couple of canvases, marked by vast, flat expanses of colour, set in distinction with topics roughly centered throughout the composition. However there’s one thing else that unites these works, and it has to do with the character of their topics: they’re episodes of silent, maybe inhibited communication, or solitary portraits of atypical objects.
Conversazione (Dialog) is a large-scale canvas, dominated vertically by the silhouette of a lit cellphone immersed in darkness. Backlit, two stylized fingers barely emerge as they body the display. Maybe a message has simply arrived; the individual holding the cellphone is stalling, trying to find the correct phrases to answer. May it’s a long-awaited and long-hoped-for message [ . . . ] ?
One had higher be certain: with Accertamento (Evaluation), you instantly slip into the footwear of a hidden, distant observer. Via a round opening—just like the scope of a telescope—you glimpse a column of smoke rising on the horizon. The title, scientific and impersonal in tone, prompts us to acknowledge that one thing is occurring, to concentrate: the tall plume of smoke could possibly be an indication of catastrophe, or a name for assist. Nevertheless it’s arduous not to think about a Looney Tunes episode, with some mischievous character watching the result of their clumsy plan, having scattered the enemy’s path with tons of TNT. And but I really feel Giulio is inviting us to think about one thing past the narrative: specifically, the state of portray itself in these mysterious Twenties.
In Il palloncino del 2025 (The balloon of 2025), a solitary balloon peeks out simply above the middle of the canvas. Surrounded by a yellow halo, as if eclipsing the solar behind it, it appears destined to fade past the highest fringe of the portray. However I wish to suppose it stops there, exactly as a result of Giulio’s portray isn’t merely about pictures: it’s “concrete.” Photographs don’t exist just about past the image airplane, however are as a substitute one with the canvas.
Giulio works in glazes, layering colour with various density till he achieves surfaces which might be deep, but concurrently shiny and reflective. The contours of the figures, which can seem sharp from afar, turn into softly blurred up shut, revealing the underlying tones from which they draw their depth and emphasis. It’s a form of portray that reveals a really attentive and cultivated gaze; however above all, a passionate one, as proven by the enviable variety of artwork catalogues he’s collected through the years.
Amongst these catalogues, one seemingly finds volumes devoted to Franco Angeli—to his obelisks, which observe the identical compositional scheme as these works—and to his symbols, all the time poised between evocation, reminiscence, and dissolution. Or to the minimize and re-applied canvases of Jannis Kounellis—consider his roses—which mirror on the character of the painterly gesture, with out renouncing both picture or poetry. There’s additionally the work on element, enlarged to the purpose of estrangement, so typical of Domenico Gnoli. And naturally, one inevitably thinks of America, not just for the formal Pop references, but additionally for the portray of Peter Halley, whose closed, cerebral areas Bonfante appears to invert, rendering them emotional slightly than systemic.
It appears that evidently by means of his work, Giulio—with a indifferent eye, maybe barely cynical—instantly extracts acquainted pictures and visible stereotypes from our visible consciousness. And but, he doesn’t perform this operation “anesthetically” or out of inertia, as a result of the impression is that the banality of the topics stems from a private type of discretion or reticence. On nearer inspection, what emerges between the strains is an implicit self-portrait of the artist, a sense that flows by means of him and slowly involves the floor in every of his works, which change into deeply private exactly by being so emotionally charged.
One of many influences behind the portray of the balloon proven within the exhibition is the indifferent frescoes by Giandomenico Tiepolo, which will be seen at Ca’ Rezzonico: a parade of figures, usually proven from behind, stand detached on the middle of the composition. They’re splendid, and just like the balloon, rendered in mild tones. Regardless of the carnival-like clothes and environment, there’s a sure melancholy that shines by means of these scenes; even the depicted animals appear unhappy.
Whereas Giulio exhibits them to me on his cellphone display, my eye falls on an apple core; it has been there for so long as I can bear in mind—he even as soon as painted it. It’s forgotten on the little shelf of a rickety cupboard, dusty and smeared with paint, the place Giulio often rests canvases that haven’t but had the luck of being held on the wall. Naturally, we’re in his studio, the place he spends a lot of his time by himself till late at evening—as confirmed by the memes that flood my cellphone the subsequent morning, once I rise up and switch off airplane mode, and he lastly goes to mattress.
I think about his evening was spent on the cellphone, portray, or interrupted by his nightly walks. Then, possibly, a movie. And it’s exactly the determine of the protagonist of a neo-noir movie that jogs my memory of Giulio: a melancholic avenger, a solitary man with a mission incomprehensible to others. A tragic, off-key determine but armed with irony, who carries on with unwavering religion, repeating absurd and romantic gestures within the title of a shattered best.
If we contemplate this determine as a metaphor to strategy the sensation of this exhibition, then that best can solely be portray itself, in these mysterious Twenties. A time when portray is all over the place, however maybe additionally because of this Giulio feels it might lose its which means. The artist thus appears to assert a solitary vocation for himself, as if referred to as to safeguard its worth: a puff of smoke, then, appears despatched out within the hope that someplace, somebody would possibly catch the message.
—Stefano De Paolis
at CASTIGLIONI, Milan
till June 28, 2025
