In the contemporary art world, the distinction between abstraction and figuration has become thinner and thinner, giving the chance to artists like Andrea Carpita, to engage into the walk on the thin line that still divides these two existing categories. Following the trail left by the artist’s footsteps us viewers may be allowed to glance at the merger between these two seemingly obsolete labels.
Related articles: Cosimo Casoni - Nebosja Despotovic - What does Medium mean in Art?
Born in 1988, Andrea Carpita studied painting at the Fine Arts Academy in Carrara, where he achieved his Master’s degree in 2015. Ever since 2011, Carpita has started working with numerous galleries, continuously reinventing his narratives in order to feed his experimental needs. Painting both on small and medium sized formats, the artist develops his research surrounding the existing boundaries between abstraction and figuration, walking on a thin line that, apparently, separates the definitions of form and gesture. Due to his vivid and curious persona, Carpita often finds himself studying the great examples of the past and creating intriguing connections with artists of the caliber of Henri Matisse, David Hockney, Peter Doig and Ed Rusha, aswell as with the masters of the Japanese Ukiyo-e. A mature research that continuously enacts dialogues with a timeless referential past, while focusing on some of the interesting aspects of our contemporary times. In terms of subjects, Andrea Carpita finds his expressive inputs within his everyday life experience, looking for triggers beneath the surface of his surroundings, and serving himself of the elements that belong to his habitual existence.
“My subjects have always been connected to my experience, things that have interested me for a long time and that I now consider part of my life. I like to imagine these subjects as satellites that orbit around me and attract my attention for a while. I have a natural predisposition to obsess over the most disparate things, so I don't struggle to identify a new theme”.
All of the aforementioned components are processed by Andrea Carpita using different media, such as photography and digital post-production, before being channeled and enhanced through the act of painting. A process that allows the artist to freely combine both personal and referential elements into an image that speaks to the viewer about something vague, yet, under certain aspects, perfectly clear. The observer is enabled to forget about his doubts regarding the distinction between figuration and abstraction, while having time to get in touch with the true element of painting.
As Carpita explains himself, his works are constantly shifting bewteen figurative resolutions and abstract, hence mainly gestural, approaches. Yet, as the artist explains further, throughout the process the only key element to underline, both in the primal and final images, is the one of painting, in all of its visual and phisical presence.
While walking on the thin line, we may be able to understand painterly beauty, in all of its freedom from any categorization.
