Stanzina Series 2008 - 09

This sequence of paintings was shown at the Whitechapel Gallery, East London in 2009. The series entitled Stanzina and meaning 'small room' in Italian, was initiated from photographs made in a bedroom in a small hotel south of Bologna in Northern Italy. Using a broken Polaroid camera, a mechanical shutter had to be substituted with the artist's hand. Some of the resulting images are curiously bleached and ghost like, as if the camera had caught a presence of the room quite apart from its physical appearance, whilst some images are dark and under exposed alluding to the dark chamber that is the camera obscura. These instant photographic images, enlarged and then reworked in oil paint, have given rise to a group of layered and pixelated paintings and etchings. They form a portrait of this tiny interior with its mirrors, shutters, and flooding light whilst simultaneously making reference to the interplay between painting and photography.

Shown  in the  East  End  Academy  -  The  Painting  Edition at  the Whitechapel Gallery,  London from July 9th - August 30th 2009.

www.whitechapelgallery.org