On 16 June Gilda Contemporary Art opens Déjà vu, a solo exhibition by Luciano Civettini curated by Cristina Gilda Artese and Alessandra Redaelli. Luciano Civettini, at his first solo exhibition at Gilda Contemporary Art, presents a selection of works created over the last few months, the result of research into Impressionism and in particular the figures of Monet and Degas. Nineteenth-century French painting never returns as a quotation, but rather as a suggestion, as an atmosphere conveyed by a precise chromatic choice and by a vibration under the skin, a rethought sensibility capable of arousing in the spectator an alienating sense of déjà-vu. 

What Civettini creates is a sort of identification, built up through detailed research that the artist conducts not only on the work of the artists he is investigating, but also on their lives, personalities and the small everyday things that make them closer and more familiar to us. 

Here, then, are the domestic interiors, with a vase of flowers that, picture after picture, seems to have been rearranged as if for a posing session. Here are the details of the light-coloured porcelain on which the full colour of a ripe fruit blooms. Nothing is precisely defined: the subject is reconstructed by our mind through the reading of patches of colour, small clots of matter, counterpointing patterns of light and shade, emptiness and fullness, which follow one another like the elements of a secret alphabet. 

And the alphabet, in the end, enters the composition in free words, chosen for their meaning, certainly, but also for their tonal weight and visual impact; or in very short phrases. An accumulation of sensations and stimuli that sometimes takes the form of collage: the artist likes to insert fragments of Japanese paper, wallpaper or old watercolours into the painting, giving unexpected thicknesses and overturning the reading.   An entirely conceptual reversal is represented by the books in the Blur series, old volumes painted on their covers, polished with resin and then sealed with the same material until they are impossible to read. An exhibition of whispering tones and evanescent atmospheres that is suddenly lit up by the inclusion of the very recent landscapes.   Here, the vibrant brushstrokes of Impressionism unexpectedly break up, invaded by scratches and patches of solid colour.

Déjà vu

Take 3D Tour