Italian artist Nunzio Paci‘s newest fantastical pencil and oil on canvas pieces are showing with Officine dell’Immagine at Art Stage Singapore this weekend through January 24, 2016. The fair that opened last night to art lovers from Asia and all around the world boasts 171 domestic and international galleries. So why Signore Paci?
Paci’s practice of exceptionally drawn artworks have a disturbing anatomical accuracy where one might immediately channel Leonardo Da Vinci (his subject even looks like him!). However, centuries of research bring us to updated studies and new men of science and art. Although having primarily studied Fine Art in his hometown of Bologna, Paci became absorbed in epidemiology in an effort to control what he knows he cannot. Being an “irrecoverable hypochondriac,” he went on to study anatomical pathology, then human and comparative anatomy and brought those influences into his oeuvre.
With various expressions on his subject’s faces—sometimes apathetic and in others startled and very much alive—Paci is conveying the vitality of life rather than the innate passivity of death. “For this reason the subjects are portrayed in a natural condition,” he said. This humble writer saw this as a reference to the decay of a human body and its return to the earth once it’s buried and that we, people and nature, are all connected. Paci simply replied, “I think both interpretations are true. I think it’s not possible to express only one ‘meaning.’ Rather, I believe that what you get from an artwork is the result of your life and your personal experience.”
When asked about plans for an evolution of his series and style, Nunzio answered, “I’ll keep following my instinct, trying to represent what makes me feel serene.” Indeed—somehow these pieces are laced with an obscure tranquility with a fine balance between the grotesque and the beauty of nature.
Progressively influenced by change, Paci invites us all to face our own neurosis with mortality and the transience of creation. See Nunzio Paci’s work at Officine dell’Immagine’s Booth D13 this weekend at Art Stage Singapore.
Like this article? Check out what’s going on at the London Art Fair and other global art news.
