Paolo Campagnolo was born in Rome in 1965. He attended the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna. From 1989 to 1995 he lived between London, Berlin and Rome and worked all around the world from Istanbul to Tokyo, from New York to Sidney.
For many years Paolo has worked with Salvo Biondo and, as artistic duo CampagnoloBiondo, they developed a three-dimensional body of art. Three-dimensionality is inspired by contemporary Expanded Painting, meanwhile, the lesson of Lucio Fontana’s Spatialism comes out in the use of canvas as a material, no longer as support. This approach is also expressed by the creation of real "art boxes". The numerous sculptured tapestries by the artist are the result of a choice of shape and form that takes the spectator on a fascinating journey. The artist exploits the potential of two, apparently distant, materials such as metal and canvas, to create his supple and brilliant artworks. |
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The canvas becomes matter to be molded and the shaped matter changes according to the light and the interferences given by the environment that surrounds the artwork.
Pigmented glues, gold leaves, silver leaves, metals are attacked by the action of acids for coloring. Case and action intertwine in the swirling search for a semantic language that finds in the reflected light the ideal “deus ex machina” to communicate with the observer who is overwhelmed and regenerated by the refraction and its lighting effects. So, in the collection of portraits Paolo Campagnolo newly revises the idea of myth itself and of hero, often embodied by movie stars. Technique, myth, collective consciousness merge into this unexampled artistic expression. The sparkling light of the mythological image, of the faces that embody it and of the film that engraves it, can corrode over the time, without extinguishing its gilding. |