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| Fedele Spadafora |
May 2013, The New Criterion, Gallery Chronicle
Fedele Spadafora is a realist who brings a modern sensibility to classical training. A former student of Nelson Shanks and
his Studio Incamminati, Spadafora uses the tools of realism
to explore the modern landscape.
The transmission of both television and memory—and the qualities they share—are recurring themes in his work.
Recently, Spadafora painted a series of portraits of Ian Curtis, the tragic hero of punk rock, as though appearing in the
degraded off-color image of a videotape.
http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Gallery-chronicle-7642
April 2013, The Huffington Post, Speak, Memory:
Recent Paintings by Fedele Spadafora Spadafora’s TV Show paintings reflect another iteration of his exploration of
memory. He has narrowed his focus from the ethnic, the historical, and the familial, to the personal. In short, he has
painted a bunch of screen-grabs from The Lawrence Welk Show.
Fedele Spadafora is a realist who brings a modern sensibility to classical training. A former student of Nelson Shanks and
his Studio Incamminati, Spadafora uses the tools of realism
to explore the modern landscape.
The transmission of both television and memory—and the qualities they share—are recurring themes in his work.
Recently, Spadafora painted a series of portraits of Ian Curtis, the tragic hero of punk rock, as though appearing in the
degraded off-color image of a videotape.
http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Gallery-chronicle-7642
April 2013, The Huffington Post, Speak, Memory:
Recent Paintings by Fedele Spadafora Spadafora’s TV Show paintings reflect another iteration of his exploration of
memory. He has narrowed his focus from the ethnic, the historical, and the familial, to the personal. In short, he has
painted a bunch of screen-grabs from The Lawrence Welk Show.
| Falling Star |
| Green Girl |
| Girl singing |
| first communion |
| The Boy |
| the Table |
| Two Boys |
| Fedele Spadafora |
| TV Tower |
| Three Graces |
| Conversation. |
| Three Boys |
| The Garden |
| Green Lady |
| Prague. |
| Little Girl Singing |
| The TV Show Pictures |
Each time, elements leap out with total clarity, but the clarity does not signify the present. It signifies the irregular working
of memory, which retains everything about some things, and little about others, and moreover, which things are so
faithfully retained changes over time. Details come to the fore and later fade back into the indistinctness. We grasp at
what we once knew, and we will recognize it if we see it again. But on our own, we have lost the complete picture, and do
not even recall that there was a complete picture to lose. Spadafora finds in The Lawrence Welk Show a rich substrate for
his exploration of the intermittencies of memory.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-maidman/speak-memory-recent-paint_b_3005696.html
April 2013, Arts in Bushwick, New Paintings at Slag Gallery
Fedele Spadafora’s new body of work immerses the viewer in a mysterious light that evokes exotic locales. Drawing upon
his extensive personal experience in two post-revolutionary cultures, Tunisia (2010) and the Czech Republic (1989), the
artist excavates his memories and transforms them into luminous and layered landscapes. A careful look at these
canvases reveals traces of previous marks, such as playful geometric shapes behind a giant tree (The Horizon, 2013), or
the image of a ghostly face hovering over a yellowish bold horizon line (The Garden, 2013). Indeed, as a departure point
the artist paints on top of previous images. Mimicking the process of recollection, Spadafora builds the images one over
the other to capture an elusive moment in the past, while blurring the borders between abstraction and figuration. His
highly intuitive process is based on instantaneous decision-making. “I don’t know what it is finally going to be until it
becomes a whole and then I know it is done,” the artist explains frankly. In addition to utilizing pre-existing images on the
canvas, in some cases this new series combines the canvases into triptychs, a process akin to collage.
http://blog.artsinbushwick.org/post/46343049925/fedele-spadafora-new-paintings-at-slag-gallery
May 2013, L Magazine, Revolutionary Hues
Moved by the brilliant blues of the skies above a yet incipiently post-revolutionary Tunisia, Fedele Spadafora tasked
himself with conveying, within the arguably fixed matrices of painting, cerulean hues so rich and deep that they’re palpably
warm, so alive that they appear ever ashift. However unexpectedly, though, tasking himself therewith conjured memories
of previous years spent in the Czech Republic beneath less frequent blues of a far cooler sort, yet one that was then not
altogether differently charged—self-renewingly, socioeconomically, politically. The American artist’s solo show of new
paintings at Slag Contemporary bears calm yet vibrant witness to relatable historical rifts and drifts as glimpsed in and
beneath distant skies.
http://www.thelmagazine.com/newyork/fedele-spadafora-revolutionary-hues/Content?oid=2306975