The Russo Gallery, in the rooms of the historic Roman space, will present to its collectors from the 25 October to the 10 November the works of Manuel Felisi, albeit the result of experimentation and iconographic-expressive research of the last three years of the artist's work.
In a continuous narrative research of a present that finds the keys to discover the future in the past, Felisi proposes his "two-dimensional compositions" linked to a very personal concept of time. As the curator of the exhibition Maurizio Vanni writes in the critical essay in the catalog "the majority of Felisi's works are linked to the choice of what the artist wanted to bring to the surface (present of the past), however the filter on his memories matches what he believed functional to the present of the future to design one's own existence, manifesting one's being through doing. [...] Felisi loves planning his compositions by carefully choosing the materials before starting her overlaps: the colored fabrics are combined with a rough gauze with which she works in the graphic works, Tarlantana, and is mixed with color, colored material and, as in many recent works, in resin and ashes ".
On show a series of works in which the usual overlapping of materials experimented by the artist - fabrics, gauze, wallpaper, but also ash and powders - are included in panels of industrial materials, such as cement and porcelain plaster. Finally, as always, the photographic image, printed in the absence of white, closes a composition destined to break free from any conventional perceptual scheme: as Vanni recalls, "in front of its woods, despite the impeccable compositional harmony, the importance technique takes second place and amazement prevails over the attempt to understand the secrets of the whole ". Amazement that finds itself even more exalted in installations and imaginative site-specific realizations - such as the ceiling with the great Vertigo for the Elizabeth Unique Hotel, luxury concept hotel entirely set up by the Gallery Russo, a few steps away from it, inaugurated a few months in Rome - in which Felisi skillfully negotiates with the large dimensions and with compositions that fall outside the traditional and reassuring space of the canvas, having the effect of an admirable fusion between reality and fantasy.
Manuel Felisi was born in Milan in 1976. He attended an Artistic High School and the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera. In his production he moves between different techniques which include painting, photography and collage to create installations in which he translates and narrates time. The common thread that binds his production is a subject that concerns all of us, our being and being here now; time changes things, preserves them and makes us forget about them. He uses photography to express a time that immobilizes and measures places, objects, people and feelings; the instant of the photo shoot is no longer a mere mechanical operation but becomes the symbol that links the different types of time described in the work. His works are composed of layers of different materials that always follow the same scientific order, like a ritual that - from the painting to the plotting - is never to be confused with a repetitive automatism because it is always the result of the involvement and sentiment that guide his artistic being. In 2014 his first solo show Griglie was organized at the Galleria Russo in Rome, curated by Marco di Capua, while in 2015 the personal Su - Acqua curated by Markus Graf was organized at the Russo Art Gallery in Istanbul.
Catalogue Manfredi Edizioni (Imola), curated by Maurizio Vanni
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