After his large ‘site specific’ installations, which have recently taken place at Calatrava’s Ciudad De Las Ciencias in Valencia, inside Brindisi Airport and in Santo Stefano square in Bologna, Carlo Bernardini acts upon the space inside the Galleria Grossetti, even going through its walls, with an impressive work in optical fibres. In the gallery’s semidarkness, a forest of shimmering prisms and light boxes, as “windows” to a spatial world, create a mental architecture of light, intangible but visible, which transforms completely the real environment - its structure and function - by changing its visual coordinates. The presence of a mark and its own virtuality are the materials, which Carlo Bernardini uses to create his large installations; the more invisible the support is, the more evident the mark would be. The more physical, the more immaterial. The artist’s visual research focuses on the concept of perceptive transformation; the light creates a shape in the space, a design that changes constantly, according to the viewer’s position and motion. The spectator ends up inhabiting the work.

CARLO BERNARDINI was born in Viterbo, in 1966. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts of Rome, in 1987. In 1997 he published an essay on “The Division of the Visual Unity”, issued by Stampa Alternativa. He participated twice to the Quadriennale of Rome, and once to the Triennale of Milan. He works using optical fibres since 1996. He was twice recipient of the Pollock Krasner Foundation’s "Overseas Grantee" (New York), in 2000 and 2005; in 2002 he won the Targetti Art Light Collection “White Sculpture.” He teaches Multimedial Installations at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera, in Milan. He lives and works in Rome and Milan. Carlo Bernardini has realised large outdoors installations in optical fibres, as well as public permanent sculptures in stainless steel and optical fibres, in various Italian cities: in 2003 his big sculptures have been shown in Rome, in Piazza del Campidoglio, in occasion of the Italian semester of Presidency in the European Union; in 2008 he realised “Light Waves”, permanent work at Brindisi Airport, and large outdoors environmental installation in optical fibres: at Ciudad De Las Artes Y Las Ciencias (Valencia); in Piazza Santo Stefano (Bologna), commissioned by Art First - Fiera di Bologna; in the cloisters of S. Domenico (Reggio Emilia), within the exhibition “2000 years of light”; moreover: Padova, 2000, outdoor installation - via Fiume/Palazzo della Ragione – for “Accordi di Luce”; Ancona, 2001, Piazza Cavour for “Luci di Ancona”; in 2008, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Lissone (Milan). Bernardini’s recent individual exhibitions are: 1998 "Accordi di Luce", Galleria Nazionale della Pilotta, Parma; 1999 Galleria Spaziotemporaneo, Milan; Museo Laboratorio di Arte Contemporanea (MLAC) at the La Sapienza University of Rome; "Light" Galeria Arsenal, Bialystok (Poland); 2000 Galleria L'Isola, Trento; 2001 Galleria Fioretto, Padova; 2002 Sculpture Space, Utica, New York; 2003 Galleria del Naviglio, Milan; Galleria Spaziotemporaneo, Milan; 2004 Museo Passo Imperiale, “Espaço permeável 2004”, Rio de Janeiro; Galleria Milano, Milan; Galleria Bruna Soletti, Milan; Galleria Spazia, Bologna; 2005, Galleria Les Chances de l’Art, Bolzano; Il Sole Arte Contemporanea, Rome; Velan Centro Arte Contemporanea, Turin; 2006 Galleria Milly Pozzi, Como; 2007 Swing Space, LMCC, New York; 2008 Galleria Bruna Soletti, Milan; Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Lissone (MI); Castello di Rivara (TO).

Grossetti Arte Contemporanea

Via di Porta Tenaglia 1/3, Milano

Tel (+39) 02 2906.2128 | Fax (+39) 02 2901.4767

galleria@grossettiart.it - www.grossettiart.it

timetable: tuesday-Friday 11.00-19.00 - Monday 15.00-19.00

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