FREEZE IMAGE

TARAVELLA CROSS

“Freeze”

exhibition  promoted by 

Sant’Elia Foundation

edited by

Leah Mattarella

 

Palazzo Sant’Elia – Palermo

April 12 – May 23, 2014

Exceptional opening from 30 May to 5 June 20134

The exhibition, promoted by the Sant’Elia Foundation, offers a retrospective of the works from 2009 to 2014, divided into sections, very different in terms of materials, themes and techniques.
More than 50 works exhibited in the halls of the Piano Nobile of the ancient Palazzo, “ Fermo Immagine”  is a snapshot of the interiors of Roman taverns; a clear memory of the Vucciria that no longer exists; of the Mediterranean cities and metropolises that have left their mark on the artist’s life.
One section, dedicated to the sacred, offers cartoons and models of the fresco project for the apse of the Cathedral of Noto, works selected by Vittorio Sgarbi, exhibited in the Italian Pavilion of the 54th Venice Biennale, as part of the special initiative.
Like a still image of a visionary and claustrophobic film, between Metropolis and Blade Runner, Croce Taravella’s works tell worlds dominated by fantastic architectures and sleepwalking crowds, often out of scale, the result of visionary encounters between the artist and painting. Croce often brings together different cities, distant from each other, in which he recognizes a common character, but also an extravagant contrast that makes his work so full of emotional expressiveness, even a singular example of ‘capriccio’.
In some of these large paintings, such as those made on aluminum, Taravella works on a photographic image that transfigures, transforms, colors, scratches, engraves obsessively in a process that requires long processing times. “Secluded in his Roman studio – writes Lea Mattarella – a wonderful refuge of caves in the center of the city, Taravella reminds me of the protagonists of the Forge of Vulcan painted in the Hall of the Months of Palazzi Schifanoia in Ferrara”