SPARC* -– Spazio Arte Contemporanea is please, consists of about twenty new works on canvas and paper that stem from the artist's confrontation with Giorgione’s The Tempest. The famous painting was for Gualandi an iconographic source and generating element for a series of works that employ different expressive languages, ranging from informal to abstract to monochrome. The exhibition is accompanied by a publication, published by art-frame books and available at the end of June, with contributions by the curator, Luca Berta and Francesca Giubilei, Monica Ferrando and Massimo Mattioli.

The Tempest has been a constant presence for the artist since his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice in the 1990s. At that time, the ground floor of the building housed the students’ ateliers, while the first floor was dedicated to displaying the collections of the Gallerie dell’Accademia, which preserve many masterpieces of Venetian painting. To allow the study of the works of the masters of the past, access to the museum for students of the Accademia was free. For Gualandi, going to the museum was a daily ritual during those years.

“In painting, there is a long tradition of homages, works that refer back to a pre-existing subject and are commonly called d’après,” explains the artist Manuel Gualandi. “But I was not interested in creating a traditional homage to Giorgione. That’s also why the first five paintings are made directly on reproductions of the original image. I think, and I feel, that The Tempest holds an incredible modern potential in contemporary times, or at least it did for me. There is a sense of newness that an artwork from the past can convey in the eyes of a painter, transcending time.”

After years of studying The Tempest, the artist felt compelled to pictorially address many of the issues that the work still raises. Gualandi captures the colours, the shadows, the body, the lightning, the drawing and the ambiguous eros of a man and a woman who perhaps once loved each other — without concerning himself with interpretation, as art scholars have been doing for centuries, trying to understand the identity of the portrayed figures and the hidden symbols.

Dentro la Tempesta brings together a cohesive and articulated corpus of studies, variations, and drifts that lead Giorgione’s work back to its original, more direct, and earthy materiality, composed of oil, pigments, layers, clumps of colour, and brush bristles flowing over the surface. Gualandi seems to tell us that painting is also a method for examining our history, for interpreting our world, and for acting within it. Transforming, reworking, or rewriting it.

The exhibition is organised with the support of Home Cucine, Banca della Marca and CGA Art Agency.