LUCIANO BARALE
Whilst analyzing the work of Luciano Barale, we can observe how the process of salvaging materials, taken from our everyday lives, assumes a new quality, one which is both ethical whilst, at the same time, poetic in its form. The act of reclaiming and reinstating these materials contrasts with excessive consumerist habits whilst also elevating the aesthetic properties of the object itself. Barale redefines these ready-made or objet trouvé through surrealist methods and processes, so much so that the object is “presented” to us with a new symbolic resonance - 2 rolled up, empty tubes of paint, their contents having already been completely squeezed out, a symbol of a personal painting experience that has exhausted all traditional methods. Through techniques of assemblage, Barale reworks and transforms materials, creating abstract-geometric works of fictional landscapes or compositions that call to mind the natural world. In both cases, the object is given a second life, one in which the original function is replaced by artistic values such as shape, colour and symbolic references. Barale, abandons the principles of illusionism seen in pictorial representations - harnessing instead "reality" to force the observer to reflect on the authentic nature of things, their significance and his work as an artist. The very concept of a single, completed painting -in the traditional sense - is questioned and overturned by the artist as a frame is transformed into a container of fragments, the individual parts reassembled to represent the true meaning of something and not merely its imitation.
[Daniela Pronestì]