Click here to enter the exhibition


Rudy Cremonini is an undeniably figurative painter with his emphatically assured brushstrokes. His fluid painting, made up of few yet decisive strokes, and his austere and muted palette of colors, open up broad fields of matter on the canvas. His ability to lend animation to the surface of his paintings is quite remarkable: he treats his subjects and their backgrounds with equal importance, to the point where certain areas of his canvases, endowed with seemingly arbitrary textures and variations, are immerged in a regime of pure abstraction. Objects and portraits are engulfed by a fluidity that dissipates the scenes into colors, as the subjects seem to melt into themselves. Their painterly quality distracts the eye and the mind and unresolved stories seem to float in an atmosphere of suspension, disorientation and ambiguity.

The scenes depicted by Rudy Cremonini are melancholic in appearance, sometimes somber and at other times romantic. Far from translating a particular reality, these images of a wide repertorial variety, evoke a world of dreams, memories and fears that emerge from the depths of our imagination. Each painting, and in particular the portraits captured in their intimacy, could be seen as an effective testimony to a human condition, situated between solitude and vulnerability. Spectral figures, things as yet unborn, a viscous swirl of presences populate this illusive painting, where everything floats between reality and dreams, shadow and substance, creation and dissolution.
 

Why did you choose painting as a means of expression?

    My first encounter with painting was both natural and spontaneous. As a child, I was fascinated by a landscape painting at my grandmother’s house and I remember spending hours looking at it, losing myself in the texture of the painting and its green and gray tones.

    I began painting at the age of 16; adolescence is a period of experimentation and new discoveries. I met a painter, who gave me a bag full of used tubes of oil paint. I started to paint and never looked back. I was really lucky to find my medium so early and in such a natural way.

    It wasn’t a conscious choice, it just happened naturally. You could say that painting saved my life!

    Painting is the ideal medium for my work because it is so closely linked to the history of mankind. Aside from the frenetic routines of modern life, the emotions that move the human mind and soul follow the same rhythms as in the past. Painting is a medium that accompanies man’s natural evolution. Its rhythms allow me the time to explore my mind at my own pace and the medium itself follows the same cadence. It is as if we had known each other for a long time; there is a profound bond that brings us together.

How do you wish to communicate with the spectator?
   
    I try to establish a kind of complicity. My approach involves trying to engage them in a seductive manner. I may seem disinterested but in reality I’m constantly trying to win them over. Without their attention, I don’t even exist.


From your point of view, what can art achieve in general?

    Art lifts everything to a higher plane. Because of this, we can rise above our basic survival instinct and reach the most elevated and refined levels of perception.