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S W E E T   I C O N S

21.09.2024

Punto Sull'Arte contemporary art gallery reopens the exhibition season with a powerful trio show. Three artists, three different ways of ironizing and sometimes denouncing the superficiality of our way of life, often focused only on appearance and self-satisfaction. Their works go beyond the canons of hyperrealism, perfectly capturing everyday life with common objects and depicting famous Superheroes transformed into ordinary people dealing with everyday life.

 

The artists presented are Roberto Bernardi, a world-renowned artist that exhibits his exceptional works at the Sweet Icons three-person show, and alongside Valentina Diena and Claudio Filippini that showcase their refined works with a strong conceptual charge and exceptional technical execution. The opening reception of Sweet Icons is held on Saturday, September 21, 2024, from 11am to 1pm at the main Gallery in Viale Sant'Antonio 59/61 in Varese (Casbeno).

Roberto Bernardi relies on the magnificence of color to demonstrate how appearance is essential in the modern world, a world where we are surrounded by false, polished, and perfect beauty. The exhibition features oil paintings and sculptures depicting candy jars, lollipops, gum, and the iconic "Oreo" cookies. The artist's intention is to provoke, to stimulate reflection on how something that appears so perfect on the surface may hide a shadow, a hidden soul.
Claudio Filippini, a painter from Brescia, is an important witness and descendant of the Italian figurative research. On the occasion of Sweet Icons Filippini has created a series of large canvases in which the famous DC superhero Batman is confronted with the everyday aspects of existence. The artist performs a sympathetically irreverent act towards those who always take themselves too seriously, demonstrating that superheroes are much more human than we think.

Valentina Diena, artist on the rise born in 1996, based her series “Icons” presented at Punto Sull'Arte on the concept of the hidden and the see-through. That’s because in the drawings exhibited in Sweet Icons, and yes they’re really colored pencils drawings, Diena doesn’t explicit the subject in all its features, but she hides it under layers of tape with the “fragile” word, only enhancing its silhouette. The artworks are a clear reference to the great artists of the 21st century, from Jeff Koons to Maurizio Cattelan, and are entirely created with colored pencils, a tool that Diena has loved since her youth.
Her work is almost a spiritual exercise, a sort of self-control of the mind, which must adapt to the slow rhythm of pastel drawing. The excellent technique and strong conceptual charge of her works have earned her a place among the candidates for the X VAF Foundation Award, and currently some of her paintings are exhibited at the Stadtgalerie in Kiel (DE). Following the German stage, the artworks will return to Italy to be presented at the prestigious MART Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Trento and Rovereto on the occasion of the award ceremony.


 





 

Sweet Icons - opening day

 


 


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