les presses du réel

The Beautiful Words

Luca Bertolo - The Beautiful Words
This monograph offers a rich critical overview of the work of Luca Bertolo from 2012 to 2017, with essays by Craig Burnett and Dieter Roelstraete and an interview with Antonio Grulli.
“Luca Bertolo wakes up in the Apuan Alps. He goes to the studio, looks out the window, and sees that it is raining. He thinks about landscapes, his daily routine, about the pleasures of looking, about the conventions of depicting landscapes, and whether an artist could consider the worn-out old genre worth painting in the present day. He turns away from the window, searches for an image on his computer. He reads the news, takes in the current state of geopolitics, the rise of populist nationalism or partisan demagoguery. He thinks about the enormous range of things one could say as an artist, maybe about whether it's possible to acknowledge the shitty darkness that haunts the globe. He goes back to the window, to thinking about landscape, about its history in Western art, about surface and color, about illusion, and about how a painting might begin to comprehend the sheer volume of information in the world, the infinite flow of potential subject matter.”
Craig Burnett

The book and show's title might work as a translation of Ñe'e Porã, the special language Guaraní shamans adopt when addressing their gods. “These Beautiful Words or Grande Parlare (talking big),” says Luca Bertolo, “demand utmost accuracy and carry enormous responsibility. Only when we pay the closest attention to the form we give to our questions (and gods have very good hearing!) may we hope to receive an answer to the crucial enigma Guaraní native peoples have been faced with for generations: Why on earth—despite feeling so similar to their gods—do they continue living in an impure world instead of yvy mara ey, the land without evil?”
Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at Spazio A, Pistoia, Italy, from September 23 to November 11, 2017.
Luca Bertolo (born 1968 in Milano, lives and works in Fabbiano, Italiy) attended the Graduate Degree Course in Information Technology from 1987 until 1992 at Milano Università Statale, where he began writing his thesis on Mathematical Logic while taking other courses in art and working as an illustrator. Following a period of residence in London, he returned to Italy and graduated from the Brera Fine Arts Academy in 1998. His work has been exhibited internationally, including Arcade, London, Marc Foxx Gallery, Los Angeles, The Nomas Foundation, Roma, and Galerie Perrotin, Paris.
Texts by Craig Burnett and Dieter Roelstraete, interview with Luca Bertolo by Antonio Grulli.
 
published in October 2017
bilingual edition (English / Italian)
23 x 26 cm (hardcover)
160 pages (color ill.)
 
25.00
 
ISBN : 978-88-67493-03-6
EAN : 9788867493036
 
in stock
The Beautiful Words The Beautiful Words The Beautiful Words The Beautiful Words The Beautiful Words The Beautiful Words The Beautiful Words The Beautiful Words
topicsLuca Bertolo: also present in





 top of page