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12/1/2011

Alessandro Pessoli

Xavier Hufkens, Bruxelles

Xavier Hufkens is pleased to announce the exhibition Giulietta degli Spiriti (La notte il giorno) by Alessandro Pessoli. In his second solo exhibition with the gallery, the artist will present a new series of painting, drawing, collage and ceramic sculpture.

Building upon his distinct figurative repertoire, Pessoli's latest body of work depicts a cast of characters that are at once heroic, tragic, earnest and comic. A new group of fairly large scale paintings employ layered oil paint, enamel paint, spray paint, and stencil techniques, which have been common to the artist's practice, to render a variety of intimate scenes: a group of musicians by the seaside, entertainers performing, a ghostly apparition in a room, a crawling monkey.

As with some of his most recent works, Pessoli alludes to religious symbols—crucifixes and familiar classical arrangements like the nativity or annunciation—mixed with sexual symbols to create a complex sense of mystery in his canvases. But as his related series of twenty drawings entitled Did you fell? I'm Good, I'm so Good make clear, Pessoli's characters are often comically sad, ineffectual or hindered by their all too human conditions.

Complementing these works is the series Painter's foam, an extensive collection of collages fashioned from the cardboard stencils used to create many of the paintings. These never before seen collages reflect a new technique for the artist, that is, recycling typically cast-off materials to form new, independent works. Like these layered collages, Pessoli's new ceramic sculptures also piece together recognizable yet abstracted objects that are metaphorical tropes in his imagery, like a candle, top hat, window or face. These simple compound arrangements are studies in color and material, with some incorporating ribbons, cloth and glazes. Pessoli's ceramics are the meeting point of his drawings, painting, and sculpture and realize much of his formal concerns in three-dimensionality.

This ambitious exhibition was, in part, inspired by Pessoli's recent move from Milan, Italy to Los Angeles, California. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog that includes an essay by L.A.-based writer Catherine Taft.

Alessandro Pessoli was born in Cervia, Italy in 1963 and currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. The artist recently presented solo exhibitions at Anton Kern Gallery, New York, Studio Guenzani in Milan, Italy, and at Marc Foxx, Los Angeles. In 2009, the artist participated in the Venice Biennale, and in the Francesco Bonami curated exhibition Italics: Italian Art Between Tradition and Revolution, 1968 – 2008 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, which traveled from the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, Italy.

Image: Cross play music, 2010. Oil, enamel and spray paint on canvas, 47 1/4 x 39 3/8 in. (120 x 100 cm).

Opening Thursday, 13 January 2010, 6 to 9 pm

Xavier Hufkens
Sint-Jorisstraat 6-8 Rue Saint-Georges
, 1050 Brussels
Open Tuesday to Saturday, noon to 6 pm

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