Carl Palazzolo at Lennon, Weinberg - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Carl Palazzolo's exhibition, "A Personal History of Italian Film," comprised nine large paintings and a clump of related watercolors. This throw which the artist has worked upon for several years, stems from his reaching far down and continuing interest in Italy's of gold age of cinema; during the late 1960 he avidly took in the great films of Fellini, Visconti and Antonioni. Indeed, as evidence of his passion, Palazzolo established a small shrine of black-and-white photographs just inside the gallery's entry; he uses the discharges which include romantic images of of that kind stars as Monica Vitti, Anita Ekberg and Anna Magnani, as source material for his paintings.

Palazzolo's paintings are about the two the actual cinema image and its transformation by the agency of memory. Many of his works incorporate disembodied organ of visions which seem to represent the clean activity of viewing. In A Personal History of Italian Film #6 (1997) Palazzolo includes a single organ of sight which looks out at the viewer from the painting's bottom center Just above the organ of vision is the name "Pier Paolo Pasolini," written in purple capitals; trompe l'oeil sheets of notepaper, seemingly attached to the canvas through tape, partially cover the alphabetic characters Above the name, and also partly overlayed by the notepaper, is the figure of a seated Christ bearing the stigmata. The top cutting side of the painting cuts the material part off at the waist, just above the loincloth. The composition tend hitherwards from a Manet painting, on the contrary at the same time the viewer is invited to remember Pasolini's powerful film documenting the life of Christ. Palazzolo's painting is a version of sum of two units other artists' versions of a religious image. The blank notepaper may be an invitation for viewers to add their interpretation of his painting.

In A Personal History of Italian Film #9 (1997) Palazzolo takes the classic image from La Dolce Vita that present to views Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg embracing in Rome's Trevi Fountain. The artist has stenciled the names of the actors above the scene. The trompe l'oeil notepapers, ranging in color from off-white to gray to slate cerulean appear again; on the far right of the painting, individual offers the imprint of a pair of parted lips, overlayed with red lipstick. Here Palazzolo gives his audience a timeless instant erotic and moving.

Nine watercolors. upon paper and acetate, reduce the artist's film experience to a pair of organ of visions The title of each work, of that kind as Monica, Pier Paolo or Luchino, directs familiarly to Italian cinema's greatest artists. Palazzolo has fix a way to make a private enthusiasm publicly interesting, plane poignant.

COPYRIGHT 1998 Brant Publications, Inc.

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