A fairytale-tinted poetry that features a cruel irony: this is the aesthetic vision of Guglielmo Castelli, the young Turin-born artist that already shows a distinctive trait. A trait characterized by the love for monochrome backgrounds, atmospheres suspended in time, two-dimensional characters painted in delicate hues and animated by mysterious forces, creating an unstable balance.
Guglielmo Castelli, born in 1987, has already taken part in various collective shows, and was a finalist of the Cairo Award. He is about to debut with his third solo show called Chiama quando arrivi – hosted by the Galleria Église in Turin – that will showcase about twenty works realized in 2012 for this occasion. All his works are permeated with an inescapable sense of waiting, spaces of the mind in which characters move, as the metaphors of existential uneasiness and precariousness that shroud our lives and mark our time.
Guglielmo besides shows a remarkable ability for illustration where we find the same trait, the same delicate colors and harmonious shapes, that oblige us to reflect, thanks to the inborn irony of these characters. A poetic vision rich in contrasts, a deepness of thought perceivable in the lightness of the images, unusual qualities for a young artist, who boasts a brilliant path, entirely on the rise. An expressive power we are able to perceive through a silence that takes us aback, loaded with meanings.
Guglielmo Castelli, born in 1987, has already taken part in various collective shows, and was a finalist of the Cairo Award. He is about to debut with his third solo show called Chiama quando arrivi – hosted by the Galleria Église in Turin – that will showcase about twenty works realized in 2012 for this occasion. All his works are permeated with an inescapable sense of waiting, spaces of the mind in which characters move, as the metaphors of existential uneasiness and precariousness that shroud our lives and mark our time.
Guglielmo besides shows a remarkable ability for illustration where we find the same trait, the same delicate colors and harmonious shapes, that oblige us to reflect, thanks to the inborn irony of these characters. A poetic vision rich in contrasts, a deepness of thought perceivable in the lightness of the images, unusual qualities for a young artist, who boasts a brilliant path, entirely on the rise. An expressive power we are able to perceive through a silence that takes us aback, loaded with meanings.
Guglielmo Castelli was born in Turin in 1987, where he lives and works.
Gugliemo Castelli's research is mainly reflected in the pictorial field and manifests a hybrid and delicate iconographic universe, in which bodies and objects merge seamlessly into one another. The figures, in their measuring themselves without constraints with space, glide over neutral backgrounds or visions of unfamiliar landscapes, which flow before the eyes like flashes of light, clouds after dusk and wind-churned vegetation. Fluid and relaxed, the line thickens into material clots, capable of giving a face to melancholy, amazement and wonder, while his characters melt into chromatic accents that are sometimes gentle and sometimes cruel, suspended in unlikely postures that are made reflection of being in the world in unstable equilibrium.
His work has been the protagonist of numerous exhibitions in institutional spaces in Italy and abroad, including the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin - where he completed a one-year residency in 2018, the Museum of Contemporary Art Rome - with a six-month residency (2014), the Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain de Saint Étienne Métropole (2016), the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna (2016), the Museum of Contemporary Art of Lissone (2016), the Schauwerk Sindelfingen (2014) and the Petit Palais in Paris (2013).
Winner of the special prize for painting the Combat Prize (2015) and finalist in the VAF Foundation Award (2014) and the Prix Canson (2013), he was recently included among the 30 most influential artists under 30 in Europe by the American magazine Forbes.
Guglielmo Castelli, Duemilaquattordici / duemiladiciotto
Softcover, 21 x 26 cm, 154 pages | Francesca Antonini
Designed and made by Nicola Veccia Scavalli