Title: Lucid Dreams

Artist: Cristiano Pintaldi

Curator: Achille Bonito Oliva

Venue: Ex Cantiere Navale, Castello 40 (San Pietro di Castello)

Rather than through the specific images themselves, it is through the labour-intensive process involved in their creation that the conceptual strength of Lucid Dreams is articulated. On viewing these works up close, the large-scale images transform into abstract configurations of red, green and blue, imitating the methods used to translate video images onto a television screen. But while relying on the methodology of the televisual medium, these paintings still manage to provoke a startling realisation of the constructed nature of images.

Pintaldi’s emphasis on the created or ‘composed’ image is conveyed through his laborious process, making one heavily aware of the method by which television transmits media images to the viewer, reducing our visual experience to unintelligible pixels. Furthermore, the discrepancy between the black and white images visible from a distance, and the RGB components visible up-close is particularly illuminating, forcing you to question the images one trusts from afar.

For Pintaldi, these images also reflect the conjunction of individual images – our own perceptions of singular events – and mass images, which we all acknowledge as ‘real’ despite their presentation to us through the edited perspective of the media. By emphasising their painterly structure, these works therefore draw our attention to the formulated media image, arousing our suspicion of these everyday Lucid Dreams.

Jennifer Owen