BIAGIO GIBILTERRA.
“Sono andato all’indietro seguendo i sogni. Dove i sogni finiscono”

21 January – 23 February 2025
Venice, Ca’ Pesaro – International Gallery of Modern Art, Project room

Curated by Elisabetta Barisoni

The project room of the Gallery investigates the idea of painting and the theme of the portrait with a small but precious selection of the series of works created by the artist Biagio Gibilterra from 2021 to 2024. All paintings find inspiration from the mugshots taken from 1920 to 1930 at Sydney Central Police Station, already shown in the exhibition Underworld: mugshots from the Roaring Twenties held at the Museum of Sydney in 2017-2018.

The photographs, from which the intense paintings of Gibilterra draw inspiration, refer to the people arrested by the Australian police in the 1920s and accused of crimes such as theft, murder, extortion and drug dealing. It is a varied humanity, with exponents of small and large criminal groups, from conspirators to crime bosses. The gaze of the people portrayed is fixed while the expression varies: sometimes the protagonists seem like actors intent on telling us their story or reciting a monologue. All this pass into Gibilterra’s paintings, which focus on the face and personality of the subject, to capture or imagine what their dreams and fears could have been and to interpret their boldness, rarely fear, and their will to almost strike a pose for a moment of self-celebration.

The over 100 mugshots held by the Australian Museum have been for three years in Biagio Gibilterra’s thoughts and in his endless research on portrait and on the possibility of investigating the characters portrayed.
The outcome is a series of intense and expressive works, which leave the viewer curious and pervaded by a vague sense of restlessness.

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Biagio Gibilterra, born in Carlentini (Siracusa, Sicily) and graduated in physics in Catania, he trained artistically in Venice, where he has lived and worked since 1979. After a series of group exhibitions in non-institutional venues, he made his debut thanks to the gallerist Nicola Valenzin, of the Fenice Art Gallery in Venice. He has shown in numerous group and solo exhibitions. Among the main ones it is worth mentioning the solo show in 2010 curated by the Bugno Art Gallery at the Ca’ Pesaro Gallery, Gli angeli curated by Enzo Di Martino at the Bugno Art Gallery in 2003 and the participation in the group show Paesaggi interiori curated by Paolo Vincenzi on the occasion of the inauguration of the Cube Art Gallery in Venice in 2005. He gained prizes and recognitions such as the XII National Prize for figurative arts “Ruga Giuffa” in 1996 and, in 1998, as part of the same competition, an Avis plaque for a work of particular artistic interest.