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About artist

Raffaele Ferrante was born in Naples in 1970. Attending theater workshops, in the mid-nineties he met Francesco De Fraia and Domenico Manfredi, with whom he formed the well-known comic trio "I Ditelo Voi", and won the attention and affection of the public in theater shows and national television programs such as Uno di noi and Made in Sud. Actor, comedian, director and screenwriter, Raffaele Ferrante has been able to cultivate with constancy also another artistic side, more intimate. The love for painting, inspired by his father, the poet Giovanni Ferrante, becomes for him a reason for dialogue and meeting with the father figure.His predilection for dense and pasty materials, as well as the desire to model classical evocations on contemporary language are revealed in his recent solo exhibition Passione materica (2020). Here, curator Augusto Ozzella notes how his art is about participation and the need for sharing. "The references to Naples, to the greats of the past, and the desire to shape matter to render an idea in concept are the elements that led me to share the art of this eclectic multidisciplinary artist," he says. Oils, enamels, acrylics, canvases, Plexiglas... the drive to experiment is transformed into a figurative breath. Raffaele Ferrante observes daily reality with a shrewd eye, plumbing the unconscious to re-emerge with a luminous message, so concrete as to become a call, an appeal so strong as to spur action. "Often those who observe my paintings express the temptation to touch them, such is the material that I love to shape - explains the artist - then I encourage them to touch my works. I like that there is interaction between my art and the observer". A complicity of languages and passions that is colored by a veil sometimes humorous, sometimes sentimental, as he himself reveals. "Perhaps the theater, perhaps the comic strip, perhaps love and perhaps my father... I consider painting the most silent and incisive form of art in its infinite representations". Raffaele Ferrante collects the classical clothes, pins them on the canvas, as if they were veils that, once removed, allow one to project oneself into places and times that escape human logic. It happens at this point that "perception and feeling merge into a single moment for the spectator, while the artist passes from the deep focal moment to the complete detachment up to its just conclusion". Perception and feeling find vigor, always according to the words of the artist, in passion and matter that coexist in the creative act, are the breath that includes the experiences of the painter to translate them into work. In his works, Raffaele Ferrante gives voice to what he loves: theater, comics, family, his wife, the ever-living bond with his father. So the choice of canvas, techniques, subjects and materials is never left to chance, on the contrary. "Sometimes - the artist confides to us - I believe that during the creation of a work I use my intuition and I leave the thought to the material". To this thought, strengthened by sentiment and memory, Raffaele Ferrante rejoins us.

 

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