Luca Bertolo: L’hésitation

Curator: Elena Volpato, curator at GAM - Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin

From June 15 until September 8, 2024, CEAAC presents a survey of the work of the Italian painter Luca Bertolo across two venues in Strasbourg and Meisenthal.

Luca Bertolo is one of the most influential painters of his generation in Italy. He is widely respected not only for his painting practice, which challenges the very notion of pictorial style, but also for his writings and his dedicated work as a teacher at the Bologna School of Fine Arts.

Hesitation is a central concept in Bertolo’s work. In Strasbourg, a monographic exhibition will offer an overview of his practice through a vast corpus of works from his main series of paintings of the past two decades. In Meisenthal (Moselle), several series of drawings and photographs produced between 1992 and 2022, representing a lesser-known yet fundamental aspect of his creative research, will be displayed in a former painter’s studio.

Taking place simultaneously in two venues in the Grand Est region, this two-fold exhibition evidences Bertolo’s conception of painting as a practice in suspension, reflecting the artist’s reluctance to explicate the subject of representation and his predilection for oblique perspectives and multi-layered images that steer clear from any assumed form.

On this occasion, an exhibition catalogue will be published with a conversation between the artist and Alice Motard, Director of CEAAC, and essays by Elena Volpato and the art critic and independent curator Davide Ferri.

In partnership with GAM—Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin.

The project is supported by the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture under the Italian Council programme (12th edition, 2023), which aims to promote Italian contemporary art worldwide.

Luca Bertolo (b. 1968 in Milan) lives and works in Seravezza, Tuscany. After studying computer science at university, he graduated from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan in 1998. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions at SpazioA, Pistoia (2022); Mart, Rovereto (2018/19); MAN_Museo d’arte Provincia di Nuoro, Gavoi, Sardinia (2017); Arcade, London (2017); and Marc Foxx Gallery, Los Angeles (2016). Most recently he has taken part in the exhibitions Sul principio di contraddizione, GAM, Turin (2021), and Le realtà ordinarie, Palazzo de’ Toschi, Bologna (2020). In 2018, he published I baffi del bambino (The Child’s Moustache), a collection of his writings on art and artists. In 2022, he edited the Italian version of the essay On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art by the American critic and art historian J. Elkins for Johan & Levi Editore. His works can be found in the collections of Centro Pecci, Prato; Mart, Rovereto; and GAM, Turin. He teaches painting at the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna. Luca Bertolo is represented by SpazioA, Pistoia and Arcade, London.

Related events
Opening at CEAAC: June 14, 6:30pm

Opening at Atelier Meisenthal: June 15, 1pm, followed by a guided tour of the exhibition by the artist and the curator

Contemporary art tour in the Pays de Bitche: June 15, 10am–5:30pm, with guided tours of La Grande Place, musée Saint-Louis, Luca Bertolo’s exhibition at Atelier Meisenthal, and the Meisenthal Glassmaking Site (Musée du Verre and Centre International d’Art Verrier). 

Launch of the exhibition catalogue at Atelier Meisenthal: July 28, 3pm

Find out more on ceaac.org. CEAAC is supported by Drac Grand Est, Région Grand Est, Collectivité européenne d’Alsace and Ville de Strasbourg.