Antonio Catelani

Firenze, 1962. Based in Milan

Since the mid-1980s, Antonio Catelani has dedicated his attention to a reflection on normative processes in the field of Sculpture while making evident reference to architecture.
His practice has ranged from sculpture through installation to painting over a period of more than thirty years, while he has employed a startling diversity of materials in the paving of his eclectic and yet cohesive path. His vast production is ordered into cycles and series of works, each of which is generated by the casting of doubt on its own antecedents, which are disassembled and recomposed until new principles emerge.
From the very beginning, his concept of Sculpture has concerned the plane. Through an deliberate stretching of the boundaries between surface and volume, Catelani tampers with the formal and conceptual definitions of sculpture by pursuing a frontal vision, a two-dimensional point of origin in which the drawn line and the plane become generating elements of volume and form. When he arrived at painting in the 1990s, his trajectory changed in form while its substance remained constant. Catelani practices meta-painting, created through a mechanical process: screenprint frames are pressed against a horizontal pictorial surface and then released. The paint stretches and lifts in a sort of compression of volumes, concluding in extreme flatness and a partial depersonalisation of the painterly gesture.
In 2019, the artist embarked on a series of sculptural works in plaster and ceramic, developed through a process that transposes silhouette drawings, derived from the profiles of hands, into three-dimensions. Once again, Catelani has rendered drawing and plane the generative elements of volume and form, establishing a digressive and simultaneously regenerative conception of his chosen disciplines’ specifics.
He has exhibited in solo and group shows since 1985. His works have been exhibited in public venues and museums including: the 43rd Venice Biennale (1988), Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne (1989), Frankfurter Kunstverein-Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (1989), PAC Pavilion of Contemporary Art, Milan (1986, 1989, 1998), Kasseler Kunstverein, Kassel (1991), Museum Moderner Kunst (MUMOK), Vienna (1991), Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome (1995, 2001, 2016), the Rome Quadriennale (12th & 15th editions, 1996/2008), Museo Pecci, Prato (1991, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2012), Palazzo delle Papesse Contemporary Art Centre, Siena (1999), MoCA, Shanghai (2006), Expo 2005 Italian Pavilion, Aichi, Japan (2005).