Gianni Petrioli

Born in 1977 in Belgium, Gianni Petrioli is of Italian origin, and has lived between France and Belgium for several years.

Self-taught, he paints to discover his unknown, he dives without a net, without a plan, magnetized by textures, colors and a very particular passion for abstraction.

It was at the age of 30 that this young father, then training to paint with natural coating, found himself invested with a desire to create that had been buried for a very long time and had never before seen the day. Abstract painting then becomes a gateway to depths of intimacy and emotions that he had not touched until then.

It is an adventure of groping, in search of saying and seeing what is refused and cannot emerge otherwise than through a great letting go of all intentions and all expectations. Gianni Petrioli works to allow a fusional contact to occur with his painting, the path to take to achieve “osmosis” towards which it tends to be a real test.

Each of his paintings is the fruit of a journey through what slips away. Gianni Petrioli paints by overlapping, rushing to encounter his own escape, his doubts and difficulties in touching himself which give his works the textural thickness of an adventure towards himself. A route to reach through the pictorial gesture, a fluidity of circulation without dodging, a relaxation. He can thus return numerous times to a canvas in an indefinite period as long as it has not crossed, pierced a wall, a beautiful escape. It is then layers and layers of material, applied with a spatula or knife, rarely with a brush, which make up his paintings.

At the age of 40, Gianni Petrioli met Lucia Diris, a painter, whose work of intense depth he recognized, and Aurélien Réal, a filmmaker and photographer who had been experimenting with abstraction, the loss of the figure to let the shapes shine through, for many years. many years. These two artists will allow Gianni to assert himself in his art and his practice, to refine his gesture and to be supported in his momentum to devote himself fully to it. The invitation to explore and discover oneself becomes stronger and, inspired by this attendance and this entry, a series of around twenty paintings has been created for three years now.