until Friday July 12 2013
Galerie Lelong
T : +33 (0)1 45 63 13 19
13, rue de Téhéran
75008 Paris
France
The title of this exhibition, “La beauté est là où se pose le regard”, was inspired by Hume's 18th century transcription of an ancient proverb that says “Beauty in things exists merely in the mind which contemplates them”. This is a recurrent theme in the philosophy of art, but one that takes on a new dimension in Spalletti’s work.
Ettore Spalletti is a minimalist and meditative artist, who has created a body of work where light plays poetically on subtly coloured surfaces, evoking a very personal story. He has never left his native Pescara, on the shores of the Adriatic, and the landscapes of this region are often to be seen in his work, represented by a simple ridge line. The surfaces of the paintings and their volumes, their edges and their corners are lovingly fashioned, polished and buffed to produce a very particular luminosity. These are more than simply paintings or sculptures; Spalletti’s works create sensitive spaces that change the perception of the spectator.
Ettore Spalletti was born in 1940 and is a companion of the artists of the Arte Povera movement. Where Kounellis, Merz and Anselmo used basic and “humble” materials, Spalletti reduces shapes to their essential components, and enhances colours by giving them both a tactile and metaphysical dimension.
