Carlo Alberto Rastelli

The fairy-tale and enchanted imagery of Carlo Alberto Rastelli (Parma,1986) draws on art history, icons of the past, and historical settings, intertwining with biographical events. Flat drafts on fir wood with stylized motifs alternate with rarefied landscapes and contemporary settings, integrating into composite images, populated by characters painted in detail and at the same time incorporeal. Through superimpositions and juxtapositions, the artist explores the temporal dimension, where silhouettes and faces are replaced by galaxies, constellations, and black holes, as if they were projections of mystical universes and astral journeys. Also in the work in competition, titled Moonage Daydream, the artist reinterprets a group of people portrayed in a late 19th century photograph found in a flea market. The image depicts a heterogeneous set of subjects, including an Orthodox priest, a gendarme and a peasant, recognizable by the period costumes of the Balkan area: “Which nevertheless re-propose an immanent ‘human comedy’ of Balzacian memory, acting as a bridge between past and present that, instead of following each other, interpenetrate indistinctly,” Rastelli explains. In fact, grotesque and alien figures appear in the painting, such as the silhouette of a raccoon, taken from the science fiction film Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), which refer to a timeless dimension, as does the backdrop that depicts a romantic view framed by a striped textured backdrop.