American Illusions

In this new exhibition which opens 2021 at PUNTO SULL’ARTE, America is narrated through the voices of three artists who have mostly chosen the urban landscape as their subject. Three artists who, relying on highly diverse techniques, invite us to reflect on the persuasive quality of the image, on its degree of truthfulness and on the traps of perception. The OPENING RECEPTION of the trio show entitled AMERICAN Illusions will take place on Saturday, February 6, from 3 to 8 pm, only by appointment.

The Frenchman Jean-Marc Amigues constructs his visions in brush tip with a surgical verisimilitude, then immerses them in a fog of glazes that confuse the contours and creates a noir atmosphere, while overturning the perspective to open the painting into large areas of emptiness, a wink at the abstract. By contrast, Claudio Filippini engages the viewer with a conceptual challenge, disseminating his millimetres seen in full HD with a series of vivid pictorial details that contradict the hyper-realistic appearance and warm the atmosphere, communicating sonorous vibrations and suggestions. Finally, Andrea Gnocchi constructs his aerial views by stripping the image of human presence and any superfluous detail, reducing the architecture to abstract counterpoints of whites and blacks and then letting a fantastical chromatism overflow that emphasises the creeping sense of unreality.

A BILINGUAL CATALOGUE, in which the exhibited works are reproduced, and with the critical text by curator Alessandra Redaelli, will be produced by PUNTO SULL’ARTE. The artists Claudio Filippini and Andrea Gnocchi will be present at the opening reception on Saturday, February 6.

JEAN-MARC AMIGUES was born in 1965 in Toulouse. His passion for drawing and painting dates back to his youngest age. But art remains a hobby, a discreet passion, yet very present, to which he prefers studies in Medicine, specialty rheumatology. His drawings then are faithful representations and strictly identical to the real models. But soon, this relation to reality will give rise to doubts in his work. Inspired by the painter Gerhard Richter, Jean-Marc Amigues will draw his new style, a new project, to make reality abstract, to “get to something abstract from something real”. As if to counteract his entire Hyperrealist period, Jean-Marc Amigues decides to blur, distort, destructure the image he takes as a model. The artist’s ambition is no longer to show a faithful copy of what he sees and draws, but a multitude of things, images, shapes and meanings. From the classic realist portrait to the one he distorts, the basic image remains the same, but it is what the viewer’s gaze will construct in areas of shadows or blurs that interests and captivates him. What the artist expects is for the viewer’s imagination to come and fill this “void”, to recreate “his” image, “his” reality. As if the artist wanted to remind us that the origin of things, of the world, of painting, can only subsist in a hidden state. Besides his profession as a doctor, Jean-Marc Amigues has taken part in some exhibitions in France and has exhibited in many art fairs in Europe and all over the world. He lives and works in Toulouse, France.

CLAUDIO FILIPPINI was born in Castenedolo (BS) in 1953. In his paintings, landscape is the predominant element of his poetics where reality is a visible term of emotions. In his paintings he reveals a particular sensitivity deeply respectful of the Lombard landscape of our age and history. Each painting attracts the observer because of its obsessive and astonishing precision, as if the artist wants to assure him and attract him with his perfect execution. The characteristic element of his artistic practice is Filippini’s ability in picturing the impressions received in a precise moment, the lights, the changing effect of the colours and, above all, the fleeting emotion of a once-in-a-lifetime moment. Claudio Filippini attended drawing courses at the Associazione Artisti Bresciani and his activity began in 1976, the year of his first solo exhibition, which has been followed by many other events. He has taken part in many solo shows and group exhibitions in Italy and abroad. He lives and works in Brescia.

ANDREA GNOCCHI was born in 1975, in Gallarate, in the province of Varese. He is the third generation of a family of painters and began his artistic training within the walls of his father’s art studio, where, from his childhood, he found himself immersed in a world of colour.  He then attended a Fine Arts College and later The Academy of Belle Arti di Brera, Milan. After graduating from the Academy of Belle Arti, and after a variety of experiences within painted wall murals and advertising fields, he realized that painting was his true path.  He thus started researching different media and painting techniques, whilst approaching modern art without however, forgetting studies carried out by the Old Masters. Since 2001 he has become a professional artist. He began collaborating with various art dealers who spread his works through exhibition channels. He then moved on to be represented, by both national and international art galleries, in a crescendo of both quality and importance. He has taken part in approximately one hundred group and solo exhibitions, amongst them, the exhibition “Iconic” at Piaggio Museum in Pontedera in 2015 and the exhibition “Kubrick tra cinema e pittura” at Palazzo Ducale in Lucca in conjunction with the Lucca Film Festival Europa Cinema in April, 2019. He lives and works in Gallarate, Varese.