Frottage – Texture of Beauty
Paolo Medici at Galleria Palazzo Nicolaci, Noto | August 5 – September 24 2023
From 5 August to 24 September, the Palazzo Nicolaci Gallery in Noto hosts the personal exhibition of the Roman artist Paolo Medici, considered the master of frottage, an ancient drawing and painting technique based on the principle of rubbing on paper, rediscovered in the last century by the painter and German sculptor Max Ernest, listed as a pioneer.
By refining the potential linked to this artistic medium, Paolo Medici develops a unique and very personal language which he transforms into a narrative space in which the portrait is not only a pictorial genre, but a representation of the artist’s perception of himself and of the society of the own time.
The exhibition, entitled Frottage – Texture of Beauty, benefits from the patronage of the Municipality of Noto and the Department of Culture and is promoted by the Liquid Art System, the network of Franco Senesi’s galleries, which has represented Medici for several years in its spaces exhibitions in Capri, Positano, Ravello and Miami.
Curated by Paoletta Ruffino, President of the Altera Domus association and art historian, the exhibition consists of an unprecedented gallery of portraits of models, symbols and subjects belonging to the Medici life, offering the visitor the access key to his training, which took place in Rome in the studio of Corrado Cagli, from 1969 to 1976, and of Giorgio de Chirico, in 1973, and focusing on the influences that these two great Masters exercised on the artist, imprinting their stylistic code.
His aesthetic search for beauty as a canon is based on balance and moderation, on the morally controlled expression of feelings and on adherence to reality, finding inspiration in the codes and values of contemporary society. A narration between clichéd stereotypes and gender fluid which translates into a sort of mapping of the aesthetic ideal, recognized by the culture of our time, and which also becomes a search for inner beauty, through a focus dedicated to the gaze of the soul as a mirror of a supreme, erotic, sensual, ambiguous, androgynous, fragile, ideal, fatal, other beauty.
At international level, Paolo Medici is currently the main artist of frottage, an ancient technique where a sheet of paper is rubbed on a rough surface or a stereotype; a technique used in ancient Greece and in Chine, and which was revalued in the 20th century by a great artist like Max Ernst. This technique, that allows to paint without brushes, has been passed down to Medici by his master, Corrado Cagli, a Roman painter who influenced the post-war artistic environment in Italy.
