BrunoDI BELLO
Bruno Di Bello. Works from the Nineteen-Nineties and the Twenty-First Century
05.2018–07.2018
Bruno Di Bello. Works from the Nineteen-Nineties and the Twenty-First Century
05.2018–07.2018
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Bruno Di Bello, Installation view, Works from the Nineteen-Nineties and the Twenty-First Century, Fondazione Marconi, Milan, 2018
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Bruno Di Bello
Ritratto di Paul Klee, 1968
Photographic canvas blue tone
280 x 200 cm
Ritratto di Paul Klee, 1968
Photographic canvas blue tone
280 x 200 cm
Press Release
Bruno Di Bello
Works from the Nineteen-Nineties and the Twenty-First Century
Opening: May 22, 2018
May 23 – July 27, 2018
Works from the Nineteen-Nineties and the Twenty-First Century
Opening: May 22, 2018
May 23 – July 27, 2018
Bruno Di Bello returns to the Marconi Foundation with an exhibition that compares works from the Seventies and Eighties, made using photo/graphic techniques, with those from recent years, among them the large computer created triptychs from 2016 and 2017 printed on Fine Art canvas and displayed last year at the Archaeological Museum of Naples.
"I see this new phase of Di Bello’s work as strongly focused on the initial Zeitgeist of this third millennium, and yet in reality also connected with the period of his youth, when constant analysis permeated the construction of form and image… Where Di Bello’s eye and mind resurface with the same unaltered vigour of the artistexplorer and troubadour of other “places” and new beauty." (B. Corà, “Images of the III millennium”, in Bruno Di Bello Frattali e altro, Fondazione Marconi, 2015)
These words, written by critic Bruno Corà for the artist’s last solo exhibition at Fondazione Marconi in 2015, prompted the idea for Bruno Di Bello’s current exhibition to mark his eightieth birthday.
The exhibition path, in the Foundation’s four-levels premises, will include works showing themes and practices that are still recurring in Di Bello’s creative activity, despite the different languages, materials and techniques that the artist experimented over time.
Historic works like Portrait of Paul Klee (1968), Zen (1972) and Mandala III (1975), the series of the Light Signs and the spirals will be put beside his most recent production in order to put in evidence how past and present works certainly show hidden analogies that are not immediately evident. “One of these – says the artist – is the process of self-generated forms… Forms arising from a technological device set in motion in a ‘sensitive’ way.”
"I see this new phase of Di Bello’s work as strongly focused on the initial Zeitgeist of this third millennium, and yet in reality also connected with the period of his youth, when constant analysis permeated the construction of form and image… Where Di Bello’s eye and mind resurface with the same unaltered vigour of the artistexplorer and troubadour of other “places” and new beauty." (B. Corà, “Images of the III millennium”, in Bruno Di Bello Frattali e altro, Fondazione Marconi, 2015)
These words, written by critic Bruno Corà for the artist’s last solo exhibition at Fondazione Marconi in 2015, prompted the idea for Bruno Di Bello’s current exhibition to mark his eightieth birthday.
The exhibition path, in the Foundation’s four-levels premises, will include works showing themes and practices that are still recurring in Di Bello’s creative activity, despite the different languages, materials and techniques that the artist experimented over time.
Historic works like Portrait of Paul Klee (1968), Zen (1972) and Mandala III (1975), the series of the Light Signs and the spirals will be put beside his most recent production in order to put in evidence how past and present works certainly show hidden analogies that are not immediately evident. “One of these – says the artist – is the process of self-generated forms… Forms arising from a technological device set in motion in a ‘sensitive’ way.”
After joining the artistic scene as a member of Naples-based gruppo ’58, Di Bello moved to Milan where he oriented his work towards investigations into the potential decomposition of the image, which he practised through photography.
The artist’s favourite medium is photosensitive canvas on which the image is captured, decomposed, analysed and then recomposed before the viewer’s eyes.
In this vein, he also investigated the deconstruction of linguistic elements so as to fragment and then recompose the meaning of words/concepts.
Over the years he has experimented with the use of light directly “writing” on the photographic canvas, since the end of the Eighties, he has concentrated on studying new technologies, particularly digital photography, which has made him a specialist in the field of techniques of computer-created and processed images.
In an interview at the beginning of the century, Bruno Di Bello stated: "I am convinced that we’ll be able to find a truly avant-garde language only through a competent, expert use of digital technologies… "
Bruno Corà commented as follows on this statement in his essay for the 2015 exhibition at the Marconi Foundation: "However, among the artists who set themselves this goal, he is certainly one of the most credible and authoritative… not only because he has since provided precise and consistent evidence of a distinct aptitude for experimenting his own form of technological semiology in his works by using photography and light in unusual ways, but also because from as early as the second half of the Sixties, Di Bello began using square-shaped grids as a basis for the process of disassembling, deconstructing and reassembling the image, which was a prelude to the visuality of digital technology."
The artist’s favourite medium is photosensitive canvas on which the image is captured, decomposed, analysed and then recomposed before the viewer’s eyes.
In this vein, he also investigated the deconstruction of linguistic elements so as to fragment and then recompose the meaning of words/concepts.
Over the years he has experimented with the use of light directly “writing” on the photographic canvas, since the end of the Eighties, he has concentrated on studying new technologies, particularly digital photography, which has made him a specialist in the field of techniques of computer-created and processed images.
In an interview at the beginning of the century, Bruno Di Bello stated: "I am convinced that we’ll be able to find a truly avant-garde language only through a competent, expert use of digital technologies… "
Bruno Corà commented as follows on this statement in his essay for the 2015 exhibition at the Marconi Foundation: "However, among the artists who set themselves this goal, he is certainly one of the most credible and authoritative… not only because he has since provided precise and consistent evidence of a distinct aptitude for experimenting his own form of technological semiology in his works by using photography and light in unusual ways, but also because from as early as the second half of the Sixties, Di Bello began using square-shaped grids as a basis for the process of disassembling, deconstructing and reassembling the image, which was a prelude to the visuality of digital technology."