Roberto Pellegrinuzzi: Nature morte (fleur)
Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new work by Roberto Pellegrinuzzi. Beginning with his earliest work, Roberto Pellegrinuzzi has devoted himself to redefining the photographic image by exploring its fabrication, supports, dimensionality and modes of presentation.
In his second solo exhibition at Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain, Pellegrinuzzi is presenting works whose naturalist subject, one entirely in keeping with his artistic project, is reminiscent of certain great photographers of the twentieth century. Entitled Nature morte (fleur), the exhibition consists of four very large format images whose treatment and gallery arrangement require us to move amongst them in order to grasp their content. Indeed it is through our slow and persistent movement that these flowers become kinetic and offer themselves to us.
Each image was created out of a Polaroid negative, which was scanned and then manipulated with Photoshop. The images are thus shown in their entirety, as they were recorded on the negative, without reframing. These three stages can be seen, in a sense, in their mode of presentation, as each image is broken up into three different shots which are printed on Mylar with carbon ink (suggestive of a charcoal drawing) and then mounted in its own frame. When pieced back together in a sculptural ash frame, the three prints create a transparent, graceful image whose depth draws us in like a mirage.
In the main gallery, two images of zucchini flowers and one of acidanthera (or Abyssinian gladiolus) dominate the space. Curiously, the factitious movements of the zucchini flowers give them a hybrid, part-human part-vegetable quality, coming to life before us in an unusual, sprightly dance that invites our gaze and our mind. The acidanthera, for its part, appears to be on the verge of opening. In the small gallery, this flower is seen from another perspective in a monumental installation that encourages us to take an even more encompassing turn around the work.
Pellegrinuzzi has always been interested in photography as a trace and a substitute for what is absent. From the start he set about to break up analogue images and recreate them on various supports to give them a fictive three-dimensionality, as deceptive as it was persuasive. More recently, working with digital images, he has carried out a different kind of decomposition, acting directly on the image itself to divide it into networks and to derive certain motifs from its geometry. In each case we are in the presence of a de-materialization and re-materialization, as if Pellegrinuzzi were an alchemist of photography seeking the formula which would enable him to transmute the real into a different and penetrating reality.
This Nature morte (fleur) invites us to examine its illusory static quality to discover a volatile and captivating state.
- Colette Tougas
March 12, 2012
Bio:
Born in Montreal in 1958. Lives and works in Montréal and Bolton-est.
Since 1985, Roberto Pellegrinuzzi has exhibited in over fifty solo exhibitions in Canada and in Europe. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Canada and in Europe, in India, and in Mexico. His work can be found in major public and corporate collections including the National Gallery of Canada, the Fond National d'art contemporain (Paris), La Maison Européenne de la Photographie (Paris), the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, and Hotel Gault (Montreal). Pellegrinuzzi has also been awarded over fifteen public artwork commissions as part of the gouvernement du Québec's 1% public art program.
