Davide Battistin and his “Genesis” in Venice. Journey into the light

A Venice, in Palazzo Loredan-Veneto Institute of Science, Letters and Arts he is in Campo Santo Stefano. will be displayed until February 18, 2024 ten canvases large oil painting David Battistin (Venice, 1970), the most internationally known local artist, a painter of light. Instead of capturing a pleasing effect, he moves between the folds of reflection in a landscape painting. it is outdatedbe a challenge.

Work is all he did ad hoc for the exhibition, which places Venice at the center of the call for caution and responsibility. The plan, he told us Luca Zentilini who oversees fair Battistin fairs the beginning, was born from Lineadacqua gallery, was founded in 2002 as an antique bookstore, which later became an art gallery and today a service company in the cultural sector, which has been working with Davide for ten years thanks to the stimulus received from the Veneto Institute, an area of ​​high research over the city for a reason. is an independent institution that always focuses on important Venetian issues. So canvases have focus on weaknesses e an impossible ecosystem from which an ancient architecture consisting of charm and destiny was born, which we often do not know enough about.

Exhibition schedule
So the show presents itself as call for caution on the dangers of intensive and consumer tourism and the resilience of a culture that clearly shows its vitality. The same environment, in the side wing of the Palazzo Loredan, with low ceilings and dark walls, represents well how complex access to beauty and window-effect paintings is in a lagoon-like city. And that is true from the lake That The show schedule begins divided into two large rooms.

The artist measures himself for the first time accurately on principal Format and it confirms its vocation of oil painting due to the material it allows. It starts withthe sun rises over the city in TorcellosoFisherman’s Island, Pellestrinaand also the part of the sea that separates it from the mainland where you can swim, orSan Giorgio Island seen from a distance.

me non-descriptive images, where the viewer is enveloped and at the same time immersed in a strange, silent intoxication. Especially in the elegant painting dedicated to the little-known Pellestrina, there is light. metaphysics, because it is out of time: it can be a shy dawn or a sunset that does not get hot as it happens in winter or even a white sky of summer light where the heat creates a saturating effect and prevents the sun from shining. . Not only.

By changing our perspective the painting changes the sound, the light, the sky, because he lives with us and that is why Battistin’s canvases are so difficult to photograph. The water, the sky especially at sunset and the rare architecture, which seems to happen in a dream, are its natural elements though the main characterhe told us, it is luce. Others are simply elements into which light is reflected, which reflects as an optical echo. Light is alsonature, The beginning, the name of the Venetian painter’s work which is the portrait of the exhibition that takes its name from him: suggestive painting restlessness and joy togetherthe canal that in its darkness and uncertain boundaries (especially the right side of the work is not finished) attracts us in an inevitable way like that body of water with warm rays of the sun, which makes us feel a little dizzy without being able to take it. our eyes away from it.

Davide would have wanted to work more in the lagoon but then he chose to return to the city he loves and where he lives, also because, among other things, working in a non-anthropic environment takes longer. In general work only with natural lightlargely in his studio precisely to make the canvas more adaptable to different situations.

In this painting, as the wings of the exhibition, evocative of the representation of the interior, there is Big miss, man, because he doesn’t want to make it artistic, almost ornamental, also banal but the human figure then he deserves to be the main character and he says this as a painter he was. His Venice is dark, restless, deep, like a dream, never too noticeable, holographic or bright; indeed he feels a certain annoyance at that cheerfulness affected by the side of character so often exalted in painting, preferring it instead. Venice of the soul which opens holes.

Among other things, the artist emphasized how human movement makes it difficult to “capture” him on the canvas, unlike what happens in the picture, such as moving clouds; water can probably be created if not stopped but only light can be fully captured.

The proposal is made stronger by accompanying original music by Alvise Saggi, multi-instrumentalist and film and script music composer, e Michele Bonivento, also a composer, sound designer and eclectic arrangement, who calls everyone a moment of awareness and responsibility; modern and ancient sounds at the same time, with details as dark as the environment they receive. Battistin’s painting is continues with the constant search to try and test yourself with the new and with this line the next appointment of the artist will probably be Venice again with Lineadacqua. ready in spring 2024, and one-of-a-kind exhibitions because this printing method brings surprise to the creator himself by giving the image back and always leaving uncertainty in the result.

Who is Davide Battistin?

Born in Venice 1970Battistin graduated in 1998 from the College of Fine Arts with a thesis on Guglielmo Ciardi. In the same year, he won a scholarship to the School of Fine Arts Athens. The following season he participated in the IV International Seminar of Contemporary European Art there Rhinein Poland. Someone restorative experience of the nineties, including in the hall of the Maggior Consiglio of the Palazzo Ducale, leading him to a direct and visible reflection on the technique of painting, a subject he has taught since 2004 at the university. Venice International School of Painting. He has his own personal primeIt is in 2001 at the Pelar Gallery in Long Island-New York, followed by an exhibition at the Palazzo delle Prigioni Nuove in Venice. From 2003 he is among the artists invited by the WH Patterson gallery in London for the program Venice in Danger. His studio, after spending many years on the top floor of the Palazzo Papadopoli on the Grand Canal, is today in an impressive attic in the district of Cannaregio. Dal 2013 fully cooperates with Lineadacqua. In 2022 his paintings were selected for opera sets Gioconda performed at the Teatro alla Scala.

edited by Ilaria Guidantoni