THE SCENOGRAPHIC WORKS OF NELLO PETRUCCI
Nello Petrucci’s works are strongly influenced by cinema, in particular by film posters that are revisited by the artist as legacies of historical memory in which past and present coexist.
However, he is also sensitive to environmental and social issues to which he has dedicated works such as ‘Plastic River’, a public installation depicting a whale full of waste.
“I strongly believe in the power of art, and what it can do through connecting people…” – Nello Petrucci
The works of Nello Petrucci
Nello Petrucci is an Italian artist and film-maker, born in 1981, who lives and works between Pompeii and New York.
He studied cinematography in Rome and graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples in Scenography. He has worked with directors such as: Martin Scorsese, Ari Taub, Manetti Bros, Antonio Capuano.
Moreover, he is the first Italian artist to exhibit at the Word Trade Center in New York with the permanent work “The essence of Lightness” (2018) together with world-famous street artists such as Ron English, WhlsBe, Lauren YS, Layercake and many others.
In Nello Petrucci’s works, fragments of reality are glimpsed, broken down and associated with close-up portraits of personalities from the spheres of history, music or cinema, so that the observer can freely reflect.
His technique is based on printing (halftone on paper) and this is why Nello Petrucci’s works are scenic and impactful in full respect of eco-sustainability and the protection of the locations chosen for his interventions.
It is no coincidence that Petrucci is called ‘the gentle streetartist’.
Both for profiles recovered from classicism and for subjects from cinema, Nello Petrucci has identified and chosen the halftone technique for its characteristic of being ‘low definition’, opaque, discontinuous, because by providing little visual information to the observer, it requires him to be more involved, more participative in order to complete what is only suggested by the mosaic mesh of dots.
He has exhibited at Palazzo Gravina in Naples, at the Central State Archives in Rome, at the Archaeological Park of the Pompeii excavations, at the American Embassy in Rome in the monumental complex of San Domenico Maggiore in Naples and in various galleries in Italy and New York. One of his works is at the Museo del Enslallido social in Santiago de Chile.
He has created several open-air sculptures including: ‘Margine’, at Torre Fossa Lo Papa, Punta Campanella. Trame”, in the Venice Arsenal, included in the prestigious “Spazio Tethis” collection together with Michelangelo Pitoletto, Jean Fabre, Beverly Pepper, etc.
Nello Petrucci has made various independent film projects, from short films to video art, receiving numerous awards.
With his latest work: ‘The Last Whisky with the Mad Hatter’ (2020) he was nominated for the ‘Golden Globe’ as best short film.
More than the aesthetic component of the work, Petrucci looks at the ethical value it communicates. His name is often associated with street art and in fact among Nello Petrucci’s street art works scattered around the world it is worth mentioning: “Sweet home” (2020), considered among the nine most significant works in the world during the pandemic period, and then “La mano de Dios”, “Red Zone”, “Masks” “Restiamo Umani”, “Imago” in Castellammare di Stabia, “Sad Generation” Venice, Distant Destination” in Barcelona.
To find out more about his works and exhibitions visit his official website – https://www.nellopetrucci.com
THE WORKS OF NELLO PETRUCCI ON SHOW
Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo presents the solo exhibition PROFILI by the Pompeian artist NELLO PETRUCCI, curated by Chiara Canali and with a critical presentation by Luca Beatrice.
NELLO PETRUCCI. PROFILI
Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo, Venice
16 June to 26 August 2022
The exhibition, promoted by Contemply Art & Investment and in conjunction with the 59. Biennale Arte, is hosted in the Tintoretto Room on the second floor, with access from Scala Contarini del Bovolo in Venice.
The monumental work, specially designed for the solo exhibition at Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo, is entitled Hell and was created in dialogue with the sketch by Jacopo Tintoretto, preserved in this very place, for the large canvas of Paradise in the Doge’s Palace in Venice.
In contrast to Tintoretto’s Paradise, which sought to reconstruct the hierarchical perfection of the Venetian government in a celestial sphere, Nello Petrucci reinterprets a dramatic image of earthly Hell, taken in Ukraine at the moment when a statue of Christ was removed from the Armenian Cathedral in Lviv and taken to a bunker to be protected from Russian bombardment.
Once again, the contradictions of war can be found in the burden hanging from Christ’s hands, which bears the inscription ‘Leo’, an allusion to the indiscriminate production of weapons also found in Italian industry.