Paolo Campagnolo

“Material Explorations”
November 10- February 20, 2023

[Excerpt from the press release for Campagnolo’s exhibition “Monumental”]:

With a four-decade career spanning interior design and fine art, Paolo Campagnolo continues to re-examine and redefine monumentality in his mixed-media creations. He invigorates traditional art-making practices with an enigmatic contemporary perspective, considering both the deconstruction of materials and the redistribution of light.

Freeing ‘monumentality’ from the gravitas of history and tradition, Campagnolo transports the concept into a celebration of the present moment, honouring its existence as something of a mystical, even awe-inspiring presence, experienced in everything from rigorous technical process, to the scatter of sunlight on gold leaf paint, to the suppleness of a canvas.

Growing up in Rome – the monumental city - it may have been the workings of Campagnolo’s subconscious that led him on this creative quest for monumentality beyond the historical, religious or fixed form. Whether it be an abstract composition or a gilded portrait of Grace Kelly, Campagnolo explores contrasts between the academic and experimental, between form and fluidity, framed as a tactile visual narrative. His works shift and shimmer with vitality; alive, they evolve before the viewer.

Campagnolo’s technical process is also monumental. With classical rigour, the artist explores the repetitive process of cutting, arranging, re-arranging and layering contrasting materials like metal, canvas and even old film fragments on the canvas. Through this process, the canvas assumes an identity of its own; transformed into both a material and subject within the pictorial plane.

His precision in hand-measuring the lengths of his materials, cutting them to identical dimensions and strategically arranging them on the canvas is reminiscent of his formal training at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. Campagnolo’s approach recalls a dedication to process unique to traditional art-making that is not often observed in today’s contemporary art landscape.

Even with its intricate formal attributes, Campagnolo’s work traverses the realms of art and design, possessing a spatial and thematic elegance that resonates with audiences beyond the art world. His portraits and abstractions are equally ‘at home’ in a Bulgari boutique in New York, a private living room in Istanbul, or a contemporary art gallery in Milan. The artist’s interior design background brings an elegant understanding of space and atmosphere to his current practice, allowing his works to assimilate with the environment they inhabit.

As a solo practitioner, Campagnolo has been invited to exhibit at Time Gallery New York (2022), Milan Design Week (2019) and Art Basel Miami (2019) and Palazzo Barbarigo Venice (2018). As part of the artistic duo Campagnolo & Biondo, his work has been exhibited at major contemporary art and design galleries including MEX CALL Bogotá (2017), Palazzo Riso Palermo (2016) and Vanloon Galleries Amsterdam (2014). He also continues to undertake major commissions from clients for private residential collections, commercial campaigns and merchandising displays, and public spaces across Europe and the US.

Paolo Campagnolo offers another perspective on monumentality, a perspective based on the mysticism of light, materials and creative possibility. The artist’s monumentality is fluid, ethereal, and ever evolving; it is based on the freedom of the present rather than the dictates of history. With this comes endless creative possibility for both artist and viewer.