Giuseppe Barilaro's scratches on display in Pietrasanta

In Pietrasanta’s historic Sala delle Grasce, once a grain storehouse and now an exhibition space, Giuseppe Barilaro ’s (Catanzaro, 1988) solo exhibition entitled Vertigo opened to the public. Curated by TralArt and opened on March 22, 2025, the exhibition was attended by Deputy Mayor Francesca Bresciani and curator Beatrice Bortoluzzi, who introduced the public to the author’s artistic journey. Vertigo will remain open until April 6 and can be visited free of charge Tuesday through Sunday, from 4 to 7 p.m.

Barilaro, an artist from Calabria is distinguished by a painting technique that aims to subvert the traditional concept of creation. His approach is first and foremost destructive: canvases are scratched, burned, partially demolished, only to reveal new expressive forms. Each intervention on the pictorial surface becomes an act of subtraction that, instead of impoverishing, enriches the work with new meanings and suggestions. Barilaro’s art, in fact, is born of contrast. Burning, which might suggest an act of erasure, instead becomes a matrix of new visual possibilities, transforming the surface into a field of expressive tensions. Demolition, instead of undoing, creates space for the unexpected. In this dynamic of subtraction and regeneration, the artist frees painting from all predictability, distancing it from what has already been seen and experienced.

“Mine is purely classical painting but with contemporary grafts,” Barilaro says, “I paint in oil, let it dry for as long as it takes and then tear the paint with a flame. What remains is shaped with a palette knife and worked to find the right balance between form, mark and color.”

The exhibition setting in the Grasce Room aims to further amplify the sense of this quest. Once a place of collection and conservation, the space becomes a witness to an art that feeds on the past to generate new expressive possibilities. A dialogue between the creative gesture and the historical context finds a perfect synthesis in Barilaro’s practice. The burned surfaces of the works, the forcefully etched marks, the traces of an intervention that seems suspended between violence and delicacy, thus convey a sense of primordial energy, which shakes the viewer and invites him to question the deep meaning of artistic creation.

Giuseppe Barilaro's scratches on display in Pietrasanta

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