The Poggiali and Forconi Art Gallery have inaugurated Pete Wheeler’s first solo exhibition in Italy, continuing until Match 17th. With this new project the Art Gallery confirms its international vocation: after the Egyptian Youssef Nabil, the American Patti Smith and the young English artist Thomas Gillespie now the New Zealander Pete Wheeler.
Pete Wheeler's Berlin studio
After seeing and appreciating his series of works in Liste, Basilea, the Gallery has started its relationship with the New Zealand painter, who now lives and works in Berlin. It’s thanks to this that the idea of the exhibition in Florence came up. Wheeler has created expressly a new series of works that, although realized in different techniques, all have the same evocative atmosphere in common: 15 on canvas, figurative scenes that emerge from the conflict of light and black or in which the colour impact and it’s configuration in abstract parts evokes dreamy, surrealistic lands. There will also be a luminous installation exposed and, for the first time, some sculptures: works on ever-present symbols such as the shape of lightning and of the skull.
"Skin for Skin", oil on linen
In his paintings, Pete Wheeler initially used conflictual and aggressive images, often taken from political propaganda and mass media, expressing in this way his social awareness of the different political situations.
"Longer than Dirt", oil on linen
With the show at Poggiani and Forconi Art Gallery his reflection grows and is enriched with an ontological and universal aspect until now unexpressed. As a matter of fact when questioned by the curator Lorenzo Bruni: To whom does this title refer? What are the “Paths of the Destroyer?” Pete Wheeler answers: “It’s a small part of a greater whole, a pluralism that each one of us knows (laughs) or needs to know in person.”The artist addresses this new awareness along with the will to question the narrative rules that the subject has today: what to narrate and especially to whom. At the same time the artist deals with the function of painting in this “immaterial society” of globalized communication.
The Poggiani and Forconi Art Gallery
Another good reason for visiting Florence before Spring. Link to one of our holiday accommodations in Florence.
