Francesco Petruccelli

My artistic research centers on the opposition between being and non-being.
In particular, I identidy the head – one of my favored subjects – as the site of an irreconcilable conflict between two ways of perceiving the world: as either existent or non-existent.

In my work, the skin of the face becomes a veil to tear away, a surface to excavate and corrode, in order to reveal the nothingness that lies beneath. Or it turns into a shapeless yet organic tissue, entirely detached from the identity of the subject depicted, and yet mysteriously connected to its physiognomy.

In my paintings and sculptures the skin of the artwork takes on a central role – not out of a deliberate superficiality, but due to the existential impossibility of knowing the world beyond its surface. Or rather: because the only possible knowledge of the world is that of its appearance.

Thus, the epidermis of his sculptures reveals new identities, totally distant from the supposed essence of the object.
I transform the plastic materials I employ, from one work to another, into stone, fossil, or metal – leaving the viewer suspended between their expectations of an assumed, original nature of the object and their own active participation in its representation.

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2018 MFA UdK Berlin
2010 MA Lettere Moderne Università degli Studi di Milano