Agatino Raciti

Back to list Added Jun 28, 2021

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Comune di Siracusa

COMUNICATO STAMPA

ORTIGIA │ SIRACUSA DAL 20 LUGLIO AL 5 AGOSTO 2021

EX CONVENTO DEL RITIRO │ VIA MIRABELLA 31

OPENING │ 20 LUGLIO 2021, h. 17.30

ORARIO DELLA MOSTRA │ Mart – Sab / 17:00 – 20:00

Domenica su appuntamento, con l’artista presente, dalle 17.00 alle 20.00

Info: photons@agatinoraciti.com

INGRESSO LIBERO │ FREE ADMISSION

Ingressi contingentati

From 20 July to 5 August 2021, the historic and evocative setting of the former Convent of the Retreat in Ortigia, Syracuse, will host PHOTONS, a contemporary painting exhibition by Agatino Raciti, the exhibition, curated by Giusi Viola, has been granted the patronage of the Municipality of Syracuse and the Department of Culture.

In 13 large canvases, the artist dissects the suggestions that led him to the creative process; in tha artist’s own words:

"When I listened to Nick Cave's album" Ghosteen ", for the first time, I was immediately enchanted by the extremely restless and out of the ordinary sounds and lyrics. Cave’s son had recently died and the whole album does nothing but remembering his memory . All this evoked in me fantastic images, primordial figures without sexual and morphological connotations to whom I gave a single name, PHOTONS, from the lyrics of the most intense song of the whole album, entitled Fireflies:

“We move through the forest at night

The sky is full of momentary light

And everything we need is just too far

We are photons released from a dying star

We are fireflies a child has trapped in a jar

And everything is distant as the stars.”

Ultramarine blue, Caput mortuum violet, Bruno Van Dyck, Golden ocher and Titan beige are just some of the colors chosen for these compositions. Some of them were used for the first time, others are loved and also hated because they helped me to imagine what they would become, pieces of me imprinted on the raw linen cloth.

The faces disappear, to reappear resembling falotic beings whereas the bodies blend into dynamic, fluid, changing, mutant, futurist (ich) entities.

The photon is the fundamental element of light and behind this theory there is a whole study that from physics can very well go up to the psychology of color, questioning the origin of the species and of all things. Have we always wondered why the sky is blue? Nobody knows how to answer this question, the colors were assigned to us from the origin of the universe and nobody knows where they come from. The resulting analysis deals with the theme of light / color / fruition through experimentation linked to the study of colors, which represent the totality of existing things in reality, made visible through light.

Each photon takes its name from a particular verse of the aforementioned passages, recalling in my mind those sounds that accompanied my work during the first pandemic of 2020. "

The curator of the exhibition, Giusi Viola, notes:

"The poetics of the figure, in Agatino Raciti, echoes the morphosis of bodies generated by light and the use of color. It transfigures the structure of Adamic archetypes, conferring a transcendence in the primordial, photonic energy, a messenger of dreamlike and simultaneosuly carnal, earthly suggestions, expressed by the accentuated materiality of the representation.

In Adam, and Adam? the tribute, also referring in size, to Masaccio and Van Eyck, leads us on an intimate and ancestral journey. The emotions and feelings generated by human actions represent the need to listen to one's conscience, with the dignity of someone who has the strength and the ability to start over, aesthetically emphasized by the excellent pictorial quality of the artist Agatino Raciti; thus the struggle merges into an embrace, and turns into a dance that is the experience of life itself.

Agatino Raciti. was born in Catania.
After taking his secondary school certificate in Istituto d’arte, he graduates in architecture and opens “A&A” in Catania, an Art and Design studio.
He takes part to various national and international design competitions. He wins in 1996, when still a student, the competition “il centro nei centri, 12 piazze per il territorio di Messina”.
In 2001 he decides to organize his first art painting exhibition called “Violence of Life” to Catania and a year later he goes on with “soul landscapes” to Taormina and “Reliquemis” to Trapani until 2003, when he exhibits in the PALAZZO DELLA TRIENNALE in Milan with “dove abita l’utopia”, a collective exhibition dedicated to Libero Ferretti.
In 2002 he wins the “Napoli Cultural Classic” in the painting section.
The success he has gained and the selection for the first painting exhibition in Fonopoli, gennaio 2003, have pushed him to organize a lot of exhibitions in different national and foreign towns.

Between 2007-2011 exhibited in 3 different galleries in Vienna up to the partecipation in the collective “artists 4 Japan” at Albertina Museum in Vienna.

agatinoraciti.com

Agatino lives and works in Catania