Leonardo Pellicanò exhbition: Fear Fear, Fear Sky, Play Fear, Fear Work

Fear Fear, Fear Sky, Play Fear, Fear Work continues the artist’s reflections on the human condition and the search for repair in the realm of the fantastical. Further exposing the crisis of the collective, Pellicanò engages with the idea of apocalypse of ethnologist Ernesto De Martino (1908-1965), less seen as an external catastrophe but a crisis of presence—a breakdown of the individual or social ability to meaningfully engage with reality. Myths and rituals, that resonate with the rhythmic, almost chant-like structure of the exhibition title, and speculative fictions can serve as ways to reclaim a lost presence.

Pellicanò’s works draw on several references from the history of painting, approaching the legacies of Western art both from an emotional and a historical lens. This self-reflexive approach is present in ‘FEAR WORK’, where Constantin Meunier’s La coulée à Ougrée (1890) is reelaborated through a more wavering hand, dislocating the original’s imposing sense of composition, into a series of nervously arranged gestures. Signs and silhouettes navigate in a hazy and iridescent image of factory work, where tubes and pipes become unrecognizable structures without any functionality. Numerous scenes picture crowds and collective action as well as their inevitable fracture into solitary battles. An ambiguity between liberation and oppression can be sensed in ‘WHEN YOU STEAL, I WILL CONCEAL’, where a line of figures can either be weaving each other’s ponytails or pulling them into an endless rotation.

Getting in and out of figures, in and out of reality are problems that Pellicanò resolves in the language of painting itself. His process is slow and reflective, carefully diffusing or revealing backgrounds and figures. Oscillating between focusing and blurring, he fills the pictorial space with presences, letting a character or a landscape emerge, only to cover and dilute his figures to return to an indefinite empty space of potentiality. This movement of settling and unsettling, also resonates with De Martino’s way of conceptualizing, and dealing with, periods of crisis and disorientation.

Pellicanò’s persistent use of wood allows him to work with a surface already filled with marks and patterns, escaping the neutrality of the blank, prefabricated canvas. When the paint or the pigment is absorbed by its texture, it is unlikely to know how it will respond. Engaging in an observation of the surface and its depth, he can either follow its clues or confront the surface by covering, erasing and scraping layers, as in ‘EVENING THE SCORE’. This process contributes to the overall haziness of the work. Its final layer is a culmination of white, often perceived as a background color, but here a pervasive space. In the atmospheric effects and gradual transitions of this works, shaped by the expansive scenery that the landscape format allows, forms can emerge changed or renewed, ultimately reconstructing their place.

Leonardo Pellicanò (Rome, IT, 1994) lives and works in Paris. Pellicanò holds a Bachelor’s degree from the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan and a Master’s degree from the École cantonale d’art de Lausanne. He has always been involved with his own generation of artists, organizing shows and performances in both institutional contexts and independent projects. Pellicanò’s solo exhibitions include Repair is the dream, Emanuela Campoli, Paris (2023), OltrePanico!, Sentiment, Zurich (2023), WHIMS, Cafè Des Glaces, Tonnerre, France (2022), Shedding all the dead wood, Fondazione Pini, Milan (2018). His work has been included in Silver Screen, Harkawik Gallery, Los Angeles (2022), Weary Friends, 13 Vitrine, Renens, Switzerland (2022), LEMANIANA, Reflets et d’autres scènes, Centre d’Art Contemporain Geneve (2021), TRANSATLANTICO, MANA Contemporary, New Jersey, USA (2020), A healthy dose of confusion before the Bang, Federica Schiavo Gallery, Milan (2020), Academiae Youth Art Biennale 2018, Fortezza, Bolzano, Italie (2019).