Body in art does not have to be a direct use of the real, physical body itself: it can also be painted. Guglielmo Castelli is an Italian artist known for his painting that explore the dynamic relationship between body and space. The bodies in his painting are always in motion, dancing, running, posing. The space in which these elongated, highly stylized bodies are moving in are peculiar: a mix between reality and dream. The brushstrokes themselves are also a visual representation of the artist’s motion when he is painting. Thick textured and thin lines juxtapose each other. The colours he employs are mostly neutral hues such as brown, green, and black, but always with a tiny dash of surprise, such as a field of lime green amidst a sea of black and grey. Combined together, his brushwork and colour choices create a surreal and mysterious atmosphere. Through this abstract representation of the human body and its surroundings, Castelli creates an alternative universe for the viewers to escape from reality.
About Today is an oil painting made in 2019.
In the painting, a woman reclines on a pillow. Behind her is an open field of trees and twisted figures. The main subjects are the woman and the animals in the background. Through placing these two subjects on the two corners of the painting, Castelli creates a diagonal composition, interrupted by the verticality of tree trunks and the horizontal it’s of the blankets at the woman’s side. The placement of objects is somewhat irrational: horses and tigers would not be found with a naked female body, and the woman’s limbs seem to be in an unnatural and uncomfortable position with one hand holding onto what appears to be a knee, and another twisted backwards and tapping on her hair. The irrational juxtaposition of unrelated objects creates a surreal world. Further, the use of colours also adds to the creation of an escape from reality. Overall. The painting is predominantly black, brown, and greenish-grey, and yet, the harmony is broken by the lime green and occasional dots of neon orange, colours that deviate from nature and instead appear artificial. This blend of reality and unreal, natural and artificial, allows the viewer to resonate with the society in which they live but at the same time provides an escape for them to enter a timeless, private, and intimate realm.
The above painting shows the relationship between figure and an open space, here Preconceived Ideas of Nothing is a mixed media canvas painting that shows the relationship between figure and closed space.
In the artwork, a nude figure bows on what seems to be a bed enclosed by an office building. This juxtaposition of a giant figure in a miniature building once again portrays an irrational and dream-like world. At the bottom of the painting, there seems to be a reflecting pool and an upright, small house. Here once again, there is a mélange of lime green and black, with an occasional addition of bright blue. Another interesting element that further contributes to the surreal nature of this painting is the variety of texture. The buildings seem to be translucent, as they were painted in glazes of paint. Beneath the building, thick brushstrokes of lime green paint build up on the canvas. On the lower left, there are marks left from dripping paint. All these texture brings the viewer out of this surreal world by reminding them of the materiality of the paint that construct this world.
Through heavy textured paint, juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated objects, and contrasting colours, Guglielmo Castelli takes the audience to escape reality and enter a surreal space with the ever dancing figure he created. Paint, body, and space. The figure dances in space. The audience becomes the figure, and the space is a timeless artificial world far away from reality.
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