Prof. Carlo Franza,

 illustrious Historian of Contemporary Art on an international level

Carlo Franza writes: “Photography, sovereign art, has told the story of modernity before and postmodernity today, with shots that have made reality prompted by a progress of continuous and visibly elastic sequences, such as the futurist photodynamism of Anton Giulio Bragaglia, the last one that prompted the recent work of Pasquale Petrucci, the architect of urban alterations (buildings) and dynamisms (people). A sophisticated theater of anonymous, striking, disenchanted, surrogate, wild, naive, out of phase and enigmatic images, the risk of a daily crushed and torn but also allusive, implicit, seductive and pathologically oriented towards the natural side. The dream is revealed so real, ready to discover itself in a stale light that masks the body in love with the streets, districts, the city, the territory, and burns with atmospheric colors the slice taken, the borders with its rhythms, the places where human features palpitate, architectures immersed in the evening alterity, persistent and implacable mirages. The images reveal the fortune and the trace of the mirages, the estrangements of this sacrificial operation that invites as in an ecstasy to close your eyes and look under the pressure of optical impulses, while a camera captures ghosts and restless shadows, shipwrecks and sways , traces and flashes, artifices of a sure eye that knows how to grasp the vain of existence. So Pasquale Petrucci with a formative flair and corrosive shots moved to the production of chapters where he projected the transience and beauty of the world, in diversity and evocation, discovering vertigo, burrs of emptiness, filaments of siege, branchy encumbrances, shadows in movement, fragments of cracks, bare macules, feverish colors, announcing a network of different visual alphabets that are now the portrait of its new contamination ”.

Prof. Carlo Franza,

Landscapes in mind

By prof. Ada Patrizia Fiorillo

Since 2 years Pasquale Petrucci has been working to a cycle which he has titled Nuragheì Contemporanee .For this cycle he resorts, nearly with obsession, to the imagery of a urban iconography , that of the so-called “breaker’s yard”, stocked cars that, take up outskirts areas of the city and that belong to the “geography of the look”. According to me they are compositions, created at the light of a temporary break up: basically pictures that the artist has memorized, and to which he returns as a photograph, according to the prospective of a stiff composition, but now with the thought addressed to that ancient house-fort made of heavy stones that look like a cut-off cones. “Nuraghe Contemporanee” exactly on whose immobility intervenes the charm of the typical lexicon and layout of the “Metaphysical Movement” which the artist reconsiders in a lot of

occasions, as a guide-detail of his own creative track. Except that, you than have to realize that his compositions are the result of precise “digital manipulations”. Basically, to specify what I had already said, the artist works in a double time which pushes him back, to reconsider the message of “ De Chirico” until take it an as main pattern of these pictures, and at the same time, that pushes him forward, arriving at these narrations through the most recent practise of “virtual elaboration”. Nothing strange, considering that it deals, on one hand, with the contents and, on the other hand, with the shapes. However, I would like to re-read Petrucci’s experiences without a direct involvement, and without some delicate references that could be dangerous for the topical of his studies, and, on the contrary, placing the “metaphysical painting” only an a suggestion level, because the charm of that movement and of the reasons that generated it with those expressive means that entered the mystery of the reality, nowadays are certainly unrepeatable. However, it could be found, in Petrucci’s pictures, an original ability to compare himself to the daily, and to “pick”, through a pre-chosen image, the uneasiness , the discomfort, and the tension that characterized a lot of existences, and not only the own. In some way, Petrucci addressed his attention to a “landscape” that the XX century has returned us as a technological and urban image, concentrating himself only on a fragment and not on the whole which is, nowadays, indefinite and indeterminate. So it would be completely impossible to paint the reality as a close image or at least as an image logically tied with the development of History. Probably, it is just regarding this state of conscience, tied to the subjective perception of the landscape in which we are dipped, that it should be read the artist’s inclination to the repetition of the “chosen” subject, which is nearly a kind of cohesion, encouraged by the expressive means. In fact, as I had already said, Petrucci has chosen the language of the “medialità”, as main technique of these works, that now they take the value of pictures both if they are realized with the “Tecnica mista” obtained thanks the union of Photography and oil-paints, and if they are realized with that technique that ha calls “Fotocomposizione” obtained only thanks the “digital technique”. And, the latter is not a change choice, but it is suggested by the necessity to communicate. In fact in this cycle there are some very meaningfully works, as Composizione NV 033, Elemento modulare viola, Equilibrio rossi ,Clessidre, Fuego, all of 2005, where the artist “plays” with the interference of the chromatic modulation, a basic element of these compositions, that he collects and, at the same time, distributes according it to the different prospective of the same subject (the demolished cars) following sometimes the light of precarious vertical equilibriums, and sometimes the

Perpendicular of an horizontal line, until the accumulation (the ascetic attraction of the mountain) or until filling the whole page, as in Fuego. The latter is one of the most intriguing works of the cycle, where the subject becomes a symbol, used beyond his decorative value, as the key of a picture of an impenetrable landscape. They are landscapes in mind, on which, in order to sharpen the perception of the adulterated, intervenes the cold light of the monitor which is able to level it, although the chromatic drawings up: sharp background paintings of Red and Black, of Green and Blue, of Grey and Blue, of Yellow and Red, beautifully studied in the dosage of colour and in the tones. They are the same colours became animated that reappear in the “technical mist” where Petrucci avails himself of the paint brushes, in order to fill up, with the substance of the oil-paints, the empty spaces that have been created during the photographic recording of the subject. Conceptually, the escape from a possible “Horror vacui” is tied to a technical variation that suggests again, for this” landscape” ,the exercise of the Painting from which the artist is left and that he has never forgotten, until recovering it with greater evidence, in the last works inserted in this cycle, too. This last works are born from the interaction among more languages; and it is simple to notice that this Painting of solid and lively coloured geometries, of empty bodies, and of harmonies, just alluded (the recurrent Trumpet), breaks off the silence from which started the troubling ”Nuraghe”. It “disorders the original order”. That same order through which Petrucci has insinuated the own perception of the enigmatic reality, considering it loads with a strong existential tension. And, this is a detail that has supported the greater part of the cycle. In fact, it is just leaving from this strange push that the artist has “opened the eyes” on the contemporary World, to which he has manipulated the connotation of landscape, nearly running after the omen of its destruction.

March 2006

“One of stronger and deeper feeling that the pre-history have left us is the feeling of the omen. That feeling will always exist. It is like an eternal proof of the no-sense of the Universe. The first Human Being must had seen omens everywhere, and he must had frightened at every step”

Giorgio De Chirico

The “Feeling of the Omen” inherent to the pre-historical Art, does a charming link with my “Nuraghe Contemporanee”, definition that I have do to these huge ”mountains” made of stocked cars that usually are in the car storage. Not so for the city-centre, they are inserted in an urban architectural context and they belong to our daily reality. The megalithic monuments, have been keeping, since centuries, a secret: theirs real function. And the hypotheses about an eventual use-function of the”Nuraghe” push me to consider them like the first Metaphysical monument of the World. In particular, a construction towards the sky suggests a link between Earth and Sky -that isbetween alive world and dead world. This existential enigma has been placed as foundation of the De Chirico’s Art. Besides, the real possibility to think at the “Nuraghe” as a place of “cult and burying“ contributes to create a verymetaphysical atmosphere. A similar atmosphere is also diffused in the car storage, or, in order to define them with a metaphysical term, “breaker’s yard”. On the scene, the real protagonist is the loneliness which slithers among the old demolished cars that, until some years ago, “lived” along the urban streets. The scene that is shown is nearly spectral. A little light goes only through some spaces that have been involuntary created among the cars. The car insides keep jealously, as a grave, infinity of: loves, confessions, abuses, betrayals, sex, collaborations, oaths, understandings, deceits, agreements, councils, regrets, wishes, declarations, insults, thoughts, adventures, and so on.Memories of a life, recorded on the seats, in the dashboard or in the drawer of the door that cannot vanish. On the contrary, they will always remain and they will become permanent. Memories that “have been put”, one over to the other, in a pyramidal shape. They have been joined in order to create an energy, that feeds these huge mountain of stocked cars; the “Nuraghe Contemporanee”.

Ada Patrizia Fiorillo

Literary critical presentation of the pictorial works of P. Petrucci

                      curated by C A R L A R U G G E R

      Association International des Critiques Littèraires-P A R I S –

The transcendent: this is the key word that should bring greater awareness to human existence – even if finitude belongs to us, even if the gaze does not go beyond the tenuous line of horizon. There is an introspective gaze, that searching within in a quiet delirium of senses and spirit and from that ancestral recess, to project outside a pure gaze smoothed by every slag-impediment. The pictorial art of Petrucci Pasquale – enriched with symbols, is strengthened by virtue of a color imprinted – now with lightness – sometimes with material thickness, or again, with the “choleric force” that belongs to the author and to color – this entity that belongs to us in the depths and in various aspects seduces and disturbs, submits because we can welcome with our eyes (GOETHE): “the totality, that is, the perfect balance, because the search for life makes use of colors, sounds, from all that our senses perceive of the external world and that perhaps, after all, already exists within us. ” Therefore, to enter this path of memory – a memory that makes use of the fragmentation of life, which “feeds” on apparently useless things but which in the context they give the measure of our existence – is necessary for the Author to achieve an Idea , trusting in this to reach the user, the one who does not know but who carries within himself the germ of knowledge that is sometimes flattened, or extinguished, deriving from the epochal scenario in which he is living.

Only the Artist is granted the gift of investigating the origin of being, its transformation, projecting himself into a dimension that is not alien to his thirst to appropriate the truth, or part of being. Gift and suffering, rigorous investigation, creativity-encounter. This is the lofty purpose of an Art that concedes everything and takes everything away if the purity of the gesture that is memory and synthesis is lacking. Pasquale Petrucci has within himself the creative force that pushes him into the vast sea of ​​possibilities, of the variability of an encounter. with the coloristic material for a metaphysical conception of things and of the world.To talk about this very particular vision that invests the art of Petrucci in theoretical and practical form, is to delve into substrates of consciences in which purposes and intents flow, dynamic projections that result in realities relived and transformed, in which the user can risk his introspection for new freedom of thought, of communication. In concrete terms, I affirm that Petrucci’s pictorial personalities take on a singular connotation in today’s artistic scenario – they emerge with the intrinsic peculiarity that is that of communicating – What? The transfigured object and placed in the act of highlighting complex moods – not only : to affirm that their appearance is not a mere intrusion – but to connote, reject the ordinary, “illuminate” for moments the common vision of what animates and surrounds us, so that the thought reaches considerations that go beyond the everyday life. We add the introspective vision of a nature with its “cuts” that affect the landscape in motion. They dissolve ancestral ties that sometimes resist to lead us into a fluid current of thought and feeling of living. The evolutionary force of color is evident, that internal propulsive thrust, which animates the figures, the interiors – that “landscape” with apparent immobility, which shines with its own light and at the same time reaches us, penetrates our individuality as finite and unreasonable beings. The irreplaceable woman-entity becomes and assumes by the will of the self-transfigured embellished by that proposing elements -key to diversify her existence, to grasp it in the affirmation of a real that goes beyond herself- in a space or dimension that goes beyond from everything because his “entry” into the world – the world that the Author himself desires for the Woman free from patterns and impositions – is unique and unrepeatable – an emergence from the terrain of history covered with a new identity – atypical figure in a dimension that frees itself from materiality to reach transcendence, break the possible and there – emerge with its enigma, the answers incomplete but which nevertheless give the measure that the truth lies between things and world. Pasquale Petrucci – with his rigorous investigation towards a metaphysical vision – opens a breach towards this direction of ideality and beauty in which the observer can encounter a truth in the depth of things or events that gradually take on metamorphosis and transcendence in the ordinary rhythm of life. From this encounter-clash with a disarming reality, the freedom to grasp what is beyond – what cannot be grasped, but which is, exists in us, lives in the soul of the artist as a viable goal that will lead him into illuminating hypotheses and perfection.

     C A R L A R U G G E R

HOUSE OF ART Mestrino PADUA

GABRIELLA NIERO

The poetics of the master PETRUCCI PASQUALE grows and develops between figuration and geometric abstraction and gradually reaches calibrated compositional results.Objects in space are a motif of constant inspiration, a means to decompose form, to make it unprecedented and vibrant. Color follows the modulations of the geometries creating original light effects.

NATASHA BORDIGLIA cultural association diip

The world of demolished cars constitutes the horizon within which the cycle of NURAGHE CONTEMPORANEE works moves, which includes the Red Balance and Clessidra panels. The reference to the problem of recycling is constant and in the two works just mentioned it is accentuated by the composition. In Red Balance the cars are distributed according to ascending lines whose shape leads the eye to wander and focus attention now on one detail, now on another, and then get lost in the red background. Reading becomes possible only at a distance where the accumulation takes on the appearance of a peninsula, of land invaded by debris, surrounded by a sea now far from its original color. The game of interferences between the represented subject and the way in which it occupies the space becomes more explicit in Clessidra where the reference to the temporal dimension is evident, already declared by the title of the work itself. The colors chosen by Petrucci for this panel contribute to the general sense of the work in which the request for attention to the environment now becomes a warning.

NATASHA BORDIGLIA

ALICE CASTELLANI Urbs Urbis Art Collective VERONA

The artist faces the dimension of the city in a European key, with a gaze capable, through urban compositions, of evoking the profound connection between different canons of beauty. On the one hand the cold architectural line, on the other the soft curve of the human body. Both let themselves be shaped by light to better highlight their beauty. The urban models taken into consideration are the main European capitals, to strengthen, through the universal language of art, the awareness of the collective enrichment of the artistic heritage in a united Europe. The mixed technique sees antiqued black and white photos marrying with oil colors on canvas.

ALICE CASTELLANI

MARIAROSARIA BELGIOVINE

The artist lives and works in Salerno, his works are visible in the virtual gallery of his personal website. His research flows fluidly towards communicative anxieties guided by his artistic introspection. The works of Pasquale Petrucci enhance the eye trace; the Artist expresses himself with great strength of creativity by solving architectural constructions, and filtering figures symbolizing structures and sign settings. The verticality of the work combines lively harmonies of memory, capable of defining its own expressive language, translating the symbolic atmospheres with metaphors of reality. Petrucci translates his freedom to communicate with commitment and methodical study, constantly absorbed in his fantastic creation of parallel worlds, looking for forms of emotional energy in which to identify and extract vital force, enlivening the vision of each theme narrated with description on the edge of the unconscious .

MARIAROSARIA BELGIOVINE

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!