PIETRO MORETTI LA CAROZZA POROSA E ALTRI INIZI

14 - 30 September 2022 Galleria SARP

SARP is pleased to present Pietro Moretti: The Porous Carriage and other beginnings, an exhibition that inaugurates the autumn season of SARP 2022. Pietro Moretti (1996) was born in Rome and trained in London, at UCL Slades School of Fine Arts. He is the first Italian artist in residence at our SARP studios, August - September 2022.In this exhibition he was inspired by the fairy tales of Giuseppe Pitrè, doctor and anthropologist, mayor of Palermo who at the end of the nineteenth century dedicated his activity to the collection and study of the popular traditions of Sicily, traveling with a carriage throughout the island. The carriage/train, emblem of an era, becomes for the artist the mean of travel during his period in residence at Palazzo Previtera. This residence program has had a great value in its artistic evolution, experimenting with different artistic techniques and themes influenced by folk tales and the many traditions of this island so rich in ancestral experiences that have in the Etna volcano.

Pietro Moretti is inspired by that world of the imaginary that becomes a word through metaphors, dreams, fairy tales where reality and fantasy merge through that magical and inner world, of fantastic characters, men, animals, fantastic creatures. The artist's gaze can be seen in his works outside of a circumscribed space and time, anthropological and social expression of a land and this Mediterranean island. The procession of the patron saint, a fragment of the religious event enhanced by the spirituality of popular culture, becomes an evolution of time in the image of the child pulling the carriage of Saint Gilles. All of this is expanded and acquires a great aesthetic strength from the use of watercolor on paper, a technique of experimentation for the artist, who manages to express his vision of the world, his anthropological interests. And watercolor as an expressive form of antiquity, used in the Middle Ages by monks for illuminated codices, was the most interesting painting technique to experiment with. The vegetable mineral pigments diluted with water and mixed with Arabic gum create on the paper nuances, shadows, smudges, shades of great aesthetic strength in which the intensity of the color gives brightness to the works, and demonstrate a certain mastery and precision of the artist's brushstroke and highlight the dreamlike and fantastic element.
In Pietro Moretti’s works, there is the affirmation of life and as every end can become a beginning," every beginning contains a magic that protects us and helps us to live... the moment of death will make us go towards new spaces: the call of life has no end... Come on, my heart, say goodbye and heal." Herman Hesse. The artist's eye is always present in his works and underlines the contemporaneity of the narratives and the ethical value that they still pass on today.