Roberto Alfano was born in Lodi in 1981. He has developed an interest in art since the mid-nineties. Over the years this interest will become an obsessive passion for drawing and painting. A mix of characters and styles are combined in surreal situations, which can clearly be seen in the first pencil drawings: front-faced, full-figured naked men wearing only 3D glasses, dramatic scenes with an erotic setting, or ambiguous psychological situations. The continuous variations in style, technique, and stroke, make Alfano’s work difficult to be described, as it changes as soon as it reaches a result. The artist's goal is the experimentation itself, with its playful and existential dimension, often engaged with children, adolescents, and physically or mentally challenged people, interpreting art as a universal therapy; a non-authoritarian Art, which involves every moment of one’s existence. His primary sources of inspiration still are children's drawings and the mentally ill patients' drawings; post-impressionist painters such as Henry Matisse and Paul Gaugin; Expressionist painters; low-fi and post-graffiti culture.

Curated by: Chiara Pietropaoli & Paola Pompili
Design and handbinding by: Studio She.Lab

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The project “/éi/ /’bi:/ /’si:/” (ABC) originated from the intention to give form to the content of thought that precedes the definition of written language. From this attempt, 26 abstract forms traceable to the letters of the Latin alphabet were generated, which are first and foremost shadows or archetypes of content that vibrate in the middle ground between awareness and will.

The creative process that led to the definition of these shapes had as its focus a spontaneous approach to gesture, as in an obsessive stream of consciousness that gradually led to letting content emerge and tracing its boundaries.

In a broader view, the theme of reworking letters and writing belongs to the history of the artist, who in the early 1990s approached contemporary art through the practice of writing.

The project “/éi/ /’bi:/ /’si:/” is the most extreme synthesis of this path, the epilogue that leads back to the roots.

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