Rafael Grassi

Rafael Grassi - Memento

Artist Biography: Rafael Grassi Chur, Switzerland, 1969 In his works Rafael Grassi reconciles an attachment for the pictorial matter and a taste for generating an illusion of perspective, a deceptive generating an illusion of perspective, a deceptive figuration. The figures serve as a starting starting point that gradually decomposes, freeing itself from preconceived meanings and generating a pictorial and generating a pictorial surface full of paradoxes and chromatic diversity. Formal analogies, paradoxes, and linguistic contaminations are some of the notions evoked in his work. the notions evoked in his painting. Photographic images serve as a starting point, inaugurating a a process of manipulation and successive metamorphoses that allow to preserve the trace of an image in decomposition. the trace of an image in decomposition, in which the elements, once narrative, emerge narrative elements emancipate themselves on the canvas, reconquering an autonomy freed of meaning. of meaning. --- Rafael Grassi Graduated in Fine Arts at the Complutense University of Madrid, since the 1990s he has been exhibiting his work in galleries 1990 he exhibits in galleries and art centers in France, Switzerland, Spain and Italy. He has had solo exhibitions in institutions such as the Centre d'art de Dompìerre, the Fond d'art Contemporaine de Montpellier, the d'art Contemporaine de Montluçon, the Spanish College in Paris, Palazzo Mezzabarba. Pavia or the Valérie Larbaud Cultural Center. Vichy His works can be found in the collections of Fundació Banc Sabadell, Fundació La Caixa, Olor Visual, Olor Visual, Fundació de la Caixa La Caixa, Olor Visual, Italian Ministry of Culture, FRAC of Auvergne, Collection Passimessa Clermont Ferrand, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Collection Municipale d'art Contemporaine de Vitry sur Seine, Collection d'Art Contemporaine de Vitry sur Seine, Collection d'Art Contemporaine du Canton de Zurich, Peter Nobel Collection, PRISA Collection.

 

Inventario is a selection of paintings produced by Rafael Grassi (Switzerland, 1969) during the last three years. All of them belong to thematic cycles that retake with irony and a delicate sense of play, some traditional pictorial genres. From still life to landscape, passing through Memento Mori, reconciling an attachment for the pictorial matter and a taste for generating an illusion of perspective, a deceptive figuration, the artist practices an uncomplicated and direct painting that embodies in a way that is as precise as it is uninhibited the possibility of continuing to invent images from the enjoyment of the pictorial exercise. The utopian impulse, the homage to the fragile and precarious beauty of the flower or the assumption of the finiteness of existence, are some of the themes that run through these works. But beyond the anecdote, the images emancipate themselves on the canvas, reconquering an autonomy freed of meaning and constituting each and every one of them a vibrant and powerful celebration of painting.