Alessandro Casetti

Painter, singer and musician, Alessandro Casetti was born in Bagno di Romagna in the Italian province of Forli/Cesena in 1981. Alessandro graduated from the Art Institute of Sansepolcro and attended the Fine Arts Academy in Florence.

Alessandro has been exhibiting his work since 2002, first at the Mentana art gallery in Florence and from then on, in galleries across Italy and Europe, including cities like London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Bologna, Roma, Parma, Milan, as well as Taiwan, Brazil and the USA. 

In 2013, Alessandro was appointed Vice President and painting teacher in the Arts Factory Project, an experimental Art Academy, located in an evocative villa in the hills of Romagna and led by the sculptor Roberto Giordani. He has also participated in a series of international residencies in San Francisco, California, and at Government Camp, Oregon, U.S.A., and in same year, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

"To create my works, I used industrial paints, mainly water and white spirit enamels that I apply by gravity on wood or canvas. By drying on the support, the colors take on different shapes and textures, yes they thicken and crack, creating the effect of crackle (or craquelé). The work therefore becomes material, alive. And the sensation is that of having, in front of your eyes, something infinitely large or infinitely small; vision satellite of the planet, the cracks of the parched earth, fossils of ancient lakes; or maybe, on the opposite side of the spectrum, the slow progress of mold seen through a microscope. The macrocosm and the microcosm in dialogue, mixing and merging."
 

ARTIST STATEMENT

"The attitude with which we approach life generates a fertile ground on which we can develop ways of acting and manners of processing thoughts. Everything that happens to us is nothing other than the evolution of conscious and unconscious intentions that nest in the deepest and most unexplored abyss of the soul. We are used to thinking that it is mostly external factors and the people around us determine our future. We are hardly ever willing to initiate a serious discussion to imagine that perhaps we are the silent protagonists of all this tangled contrivance. Perhaps because it is easier to camouflage ourselves as victims and attribute our failures to others than it is to put ourselves in first line. 

With my paintings, I metaphorically represent through the skin all the emotional processes that happen inside and outside of our own bodies. A skin that recounts, like a geographical map, the unexplored latitudes of our most intimate and profound inner self. A psychedelic journey that aims to bring attention to the inside and not the outside. One that points the finger at the crooked and subtle margins of our ego. Because it is precisely inside that is born the root of everything that will happen outside. Cracks of color that open into a space where everything dissolves, perhaps to make way for a better and responsible future."