Casa della Confraternita of Udine
March 1 – April 5, 2025
Opening: Saturday 1 March at 11:00
On show the large-format paintings created in the years between 2019 and 2024 by Maestro Carlo Alberto Palumbo.The paintings, of alchemical and philosophical inspiration, show the body understood as a means through which to achieve enlightenment. The transience of the flesh in contrast to the transcendence of spiritual elevation: an apparently antithetical relationship in which, paradoxically, the latter sees its presuppositions in the former.
The Vanitas of bodies without frills consequently become bearers of universal values and invite us to reflect on human miseries and on the profound meanings of our existence, becoming instruments through which to reach new degrees of awareness.
“An image – which for Carlo Alberto Palumbo is almost always a human imago, captured in its primordial nakedness – not flattened, frozen in a single fixed point of view, but enveloped in the continuous vibration given by the breathing of the subject and the artist, struck by a light that is never still and that, together with the shadows, constantly changes with the slightest movement; An image accompanied by its own perfume, by the silent messages contained in the glances, or by the sounds of the body catching its breath, painfully settling; an image like a mysterious portal from which a voice echoes, breaking the silence and entering into dialogue with the one who portrays this face, this body. It is therefore not just a matter of representing what we see with the greatest possible attention, but of capturing in the pictorial representation of the visible the sensations and thoughts that this pulsating form is capable of arousing in us: “I become in the sensation and at the same time something happens through the sensation”, wrote Deleuze in his essay on Francis Bacon.”
from the critical text by Ivan Crico
Entry hours: from Thursday to Sunday 9:00 – 17:30
Exhibition catalog with critical text by Ivan Crico
Graphic design: Ivan Persoglia
Exhibition sponsored by the Municipality of Udine, in collaboration with Civici Musei of Udine, promoted by the Anthropoi XXI Cultural Association, in collaboration with The Guide Artists Publishing.