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Giuseppe Gabellone

Born in 1973 in Brindisi, Italy, Giuseppe Gabellone currently lives and works in Paris.

Through his practice, which combines several mediums, Gabellone created the basis for his synthesis of the surreal, the classical, and the baroque. His work is characterized by strict formal research and constant experimentation with different mediums as well as their idioms and materials. And results in an analytic reflection on the use of space.

Since the beginning of the 2000s, he investigates different types of wall sculpture and reinterprets traditional Italian wall relief. His work not only explores the dialectics between 2D and 3D but also between representation and ornament.

‘Trying new things is the driving force.’

Giuseppe Gabellone primarily renegotiates sculpture’s relationship to a set of material and historical referents. In particular, monuments, sites, architecture, and landscape — that simultaneously compel retroactive interpretative strategies and question their relevance.

Fascinated by allusions to pre-existing images and objects he explains further:

‘The possibility of using these references — that are emptied of content per se, without specific historical, ideological or affective ties — just in a formal way, generates an ambiguity that interests me.’

However, his series of untitled portrait-format photographs delineate another shift in his practice. Images of cloth tarpaulins are printed with found photographs and mounted on vertical metal grid structures that are weighted down with cement blocks. When transported outdoors, the wind and elements distort the fabric, and the images warp and buckle.

Gabellone stops the motion with a click of the shutter, lending a rudimentary, cinematographic quality to the pictures. At once visibly linked to the preceding works, they seem to have shaken off their literal, historical and sculptural burden. One suspects this is only a temporary liberation.

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