APPARIZIONI | FEDERICO INFANTE

Federico Infante has developed an entirely personal and recognisable style that mixes the strong gestures typical of expressionism with a figuration dense with dreamlike suggestions. On one hand he treats the canvas as an abstractionist, indulging in informal painting that is often characterised by automatism; on the other hand he superimposes onto this almost unintentional process a rational aspect that paradoxically seeks to represent visions of the unconscious. The result is unsettling, superimposing the lightness of dreams onto the scratched material of the background. Hence the title of the show, “Apparizioni”, which refers to the almost phantasmatic appearance of the painted figures, caught in moments of disorientation in front of the vastness of the sea or the sky or the surrounding landscape.

Strengthened by an extraordinary technique and a remarkable visual culture (often his historical models are recognisable, even if there is never servile imitation) Infante sketches in a literary way, almost as if he were a poet of the image, life that is beyond life, or below it, that is, in an elsewhere where dream becomes reality and, vice versa, reality merges with dream. “He expresses his creativity – writes Alessandra Redaelli – in perfect equilibrium between the language of tradition and the more subtle and insidious anxieties of the contemporary”.