carlo PANTALEONE

I am 67 years old, I live in Rome and I have been dedicating myself to “making art” since I was a little younger. In high school we had set up a movement inspired by the “Dadaists” (Duchamp, Tzara, etc.).

Intellectual provocation, the rejection of conventional patterns, irony and self-irony were, at the time, the disruptive message we wanted to convey. Even today, when I create a work, I feel a strong need to propose to the observer’s gaze this reflection on freedom of interpretation.

I approach the creation of a work with an idea, or rather, a vision. Sometimes I immediately reach my goal and the painting or installation is there, untouchable. More often, however, I am dissatisfied with the result, and that is when a “challenge” between me and the work comes into play. What I look for is the harmony of shapes, colors, the coherence of the whole, movement, musicality and… that’s it.

My works often do not answer the question “WHAT DOES IT MEAN?”. I prefer to leave the work the task of being a bearer of “MYSTERY”, just as life is mysterious, the universe, where complexity and beauty exist — that beauty that does not need explanation and that our senses perceive instinctively, as it is by their nature.

For some years I have also been involved in actions on the territory, to spread a critical message towards those behaviors of our society that are leading us towards a rapid decline of human civilization: climate crisis, wars, social inequalities, the result of a voracious turbo-capitalism. I created a work where Planet Earth is symbolized in a toilet, overflowing with the waste of our “AGI”. The toilet is clogged. “CLOGGED UP” is the title of the work and its explanation.

A theme that has involved me in some works is communication. Or rather, the difficulty of simple and reciprocal communication. We are interested in exaggerations, and our ego quickly and superficially selects visual and auditory stimuli. Contemplation, questioning, doubt: they can help us.