Gian-Martino Cecere | L’Incontro | 2020

Born 1990 in Waldshut, Germany, the artist Gian-Martino Cecere spent his childhood in the small village of Cisternino in Southern Italy. Cecere began formally developing his artistic practice while studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Urbino from 2012 until 2015. In 2014 Cecere received the Benelli prize for which he created a large-scale public sculpture. In 2016 Cecere moved to Berlin and then participated in the BoCs Art Residency, Cosenza in 2019.

The juxtaposing of binaries is integral to Cecere’s practice. Cecere utilises the canvas as a site for the collision and coalescing of seemingly polar concepts such as reality and artifice, stasis and rhythm, recovery and interruption. The driving together of these disparate concepts creates a tension that charges Cecere’s works with vitality.

Furthermore, this bringing together of seemingly opposing concepts is reflected in Cecere’s methodology for creation. Incorporates canvas cuttings, sketches, worn materials and more to create a collage on canvas which Cecere consolidates through paint. Each of these materials is loaded with its own history, resulting in a form of pictorial palimpsest. As a consequence, each element of the work is imbued with new meaning and the boundaries between each are blurred. The resulting work is conceivable as a whole but upon closer inspection bears witness to its individual fragments.