Capsule Venice is delighted to present to the public artist Alessandro Teoldi’s (b. 1987 Milan; lives and works in Brooklyn) special project “Dipinti”, featuring his new paintings and works on paper.
The project is hosted in Capsule’s Project Room 1. Teoldi’s homages to the language of painting, no matter whether in his newest oil on canvas pieces or his gouaches on paper, are expansive and resonant. On this occasion, the artist – who studied photography, first in Milan and then in New York, and who, in recent years, has come to prominence for works with aircraft blankets, uses an unfamiliar medium to present daily domestic scenes, familiar faces, intimate atmospheres, and sober situations. While not a widely known aspect of his practice, oils have long been a longstanding interest for the artist. The depictions in these new works are neither spectacular nor extraordinary but exist as a sort of personal diary that is extremely true to life. The miniature size of the works stresses the idea of intimacy, the unassuming nature of his subjects which span from flowers to sardines, from landscapes to still lifes, and tributes to influences including Giorgio Morandi - one of the artists Teoldi indirectly quotes regularly. Also among the images is a naked male back, a body in front of a window, men showering. The works are a small encyclopedia of the quotidian that Alessandro’s warm palette translates into imagery.
On the occasion of the project, curator Manuela Lietti conducted an interview with Teoldi to shed light on the artist’s new adventure.
Manuela Lietti (hereafter referred to as M.L.): What role does painting play in your life and work?
Alessandro Teoldi (hereafter referred to as A.T.): Painting has played a central role in my work for a long time. When I think about my growth as an artist, I think that it was the paintings I saw in museums and galleries that for me functioned as the entry point to artmaking in a broader sense. Many people refer to my fabric works as paintings and I think this is pretty meaningful. During the years when I was more focused on the creation of my textile series, paintings and drawings were always the starting point of the work both in its formal aspect and in the chromatic choice.
M.L.: Why did you feel the need to express yourself through painting at this stage in your career -- especially not having a formal background in painting? Perhaps painting could be considered an almost obligatory step?
A.T.: Yes, I think that painting and drawing are playing a central role in pushing my work further and so in a way yes, they are necessary exercises at the moment. In the last years spent in my studio, I found myself experimenting a lot and painting ended up making its way into my more textile and collage-based work. I have a great curiosity for different materials and working with different media at the same time has become an essential aspect in my practice. It often happens that I’d work on a painting and at the same time on a sculpture and on a textile-collage -- I am deeply convinced that the results of all of it becomes my work in a broader sense and could not be considered in its individuality. I love this multiplicity.
M.L.: In addition to Giorgio Morandi - whose influence can be noticed in these new paintings and also in some of your concrete works - what are the pictorial references that you took into account for these works? And more in general, what are the influences that have shaped your personal and professional taste?
A.T.: To be honest with you, my taste shifts quite often, and I look at different artists depending on what I am working on at a specific moment. In the last year or so, I have been looking a lot at Italian painters from the 1930s and 1920s: Casorati, Sironi, the Roman school and so Mafai, Cavalli, Janni, Corrado Cagli, Capogrossi (the more figurative years). For sure I deeply love Giorgio Morandi -- his colors and the formal simplicity of his work have always been a great reference for me.
M.L.: You can notice a very intimate and familiar feeling in the work, as if it were a personal journal, a story made up of ‘little things’ with their own dignity, even if they are often ignored. Did you want to express this? How did you choose these subjects?
A.T.: I’m happy that in the work you can see an intimate and familiar atmosphere. Over the years I have been trying to work on these subjects by choosing materials that are very tactile and connected to personal and domestic experiences. I have tried to do it also by representing intimate actions such as hugs, hands and effusions between bodies. As for the subjects of the paintings that depends -- they are sometimes completely invented, sometimes inspired by other paintings, and sometimes taken from a picture I have in my camera roll. They usually are the combination of both my personal experience and what I love to look at inside a museum or gallery.
M.L.: Is there, or will there be, a connection with your fabric creations in the future?
A.T.: As I was telling you earlier, painting has found its way in in my more textile and collage work. I consider these new series of wall pieces as the natural evolution of the works I made for some time using airlines blankets. Using drawings and painting on these new compositions really gave me the opportunity to play a lot with a certain contamination of materials that allows a layering that I was pretty much excluding in the older works – it’s very exciting!
