PATRIZIO DI MASSIMO, KURA, MILANO

Patrizio di Massimo at KURA. Milan

The first solo exhibition in Milan by the Italian artist Patrizio Di Massimo (born in 1983, lives and works in London): a body of new works which further explores on a larger scale many themes dear to the artist.
Patrizio Di Massimo sets up a vocabulary with endless combinations of information and references: from Renaissance painting, through Mannerism and the late nineteenth century French artists, to the icons of contemporary photography, to unidentified images found on the web, to an archive of personal drawings and photographs.
The artist works at an ever-present space-time junction, creating an imaginary world in which if he anachronistically seems to draw on a past tradition, he actually makes an ancient language current, bringing it back to our time, instilling new energy and a new vision into it with images relating to the personal and the universal, to the public and the private.
Clad in clever irony and classic elegance, Patrizio Di Massimo’s paintings become paraphrases of a much larger world in which the artist includes friends, family, acquaintances and people close to him. His characters take shape, move, leave the studio and the mind of the artist to confront the real world – no longer a plain representation of themselves, but main actors and presences, the interpreters of their own life and defined identities. Masculine and feminine merge in the artist’s practice, and the so-called “gender roles” are constantly redefined, questioned and recoded.
The artist therefore represents himself, his self-portrait, in a multitude of works and in a continuous externalization of himself, aimed at a process of constant identity validation.
To a vision of the world so rich in angles, imperfections, timbres, and devoid of any possible objectification, Patrizio Di Massimo’s pictorial clarity seems to respond as a magnifying glass capable of looking into the folds of reality and thus becoming the only true and possible key to understanding. It is a painting that amplifies, that highlights, that seems to scrutinize without judgment. The cathartic effect of the gaze impressed on the canvas can only highlight a perfectly imperfect world, which includes desires, feelings and inclinations that the artist cleverly brings to the surface. The representation thus becomes an allegory of contemporary man, a character with a thousand faces à la Pirandello, who similarly to an interpreter is able to play different roles and offer the viewers the possibility of choosing their favorite.

For information: www.k-u-r-a.it

PATRIZIO DI MASSIMO
(b. 1983, Italy) lives and works in London, where he graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art. Solo shows include: Palazzo Ducale, Urbino (Upcoming: November 2019), ChertLüdde, Berlin (2018), Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels (2017), NICC, Brussels (2016), Monteverdi, Tuscany (2015), T293, Rome (2014), Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon (2014), Gasworks, London (2013), Villa Medici, Rome (2012). Recent group shows include: A Tale of a Tub, Rotterdam (2019), Museion, Bolzano (2018), EVA International, Limerick (2018), HangarBicocca, Milan (2017), BASEMENT ROMA, Rome (2016), Fiorucci Art Trust, London (2015), Triennale di Milano (2015), MuHKA, An- twerp (2014), Castello di Rivoli, Tourin (2014), Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2013), MAXXI, Rome (2012).

ABOUT KURA.
KURA. is a long-term exhibition program conceived and curated by CURA. Initiated in July 2018 in the premises of Fonderia Artistica Battaglia in Milan, KURA. is in- tended as an independent non-profit project that defines itself over time. Born from a misspelling of CURA. magazine’s name, the K represents the glitch, the element of novelty that bases its roots in the very idea of “spazio okkupato” (occupied space), reminiscent of the K in Kunsthalle, without necessarily being one.