A painting, according to Riccardo Baruzzi, is an object between objects and as such it shall be transported, moved and chosen. The Porta Pittura paintings can be objects of contemplation, but Baruzzi in particular intends to inspire a non-contemplative relation between person and painting. The Porta Pittura encourages people to actively come closer to painting.
The first Porta Pittura was produced in 2010, and since then Riccardo Baruzzi has created two or three every year. Over the years the Porta Pittura has experienced and gathered the intrinsic changes of the pictorial research of the artist: the firsts exemplaries are material, printed with the pressure of objects dipped into colour; others are characterised by the repetition of a process that alternates painting of the front and back; some are devoted to abstractions of landscape painting and others present figurative subjects.
The Porta pittura dei riccioli (2015), winner of the 60th edition of the Premio Termoli, has six canvas (one made of raw linen, five of cotton) and a panel, and presents the repetition of a precious sign for the artist, that is the curl, which in many works represents the relinquish of gravity and of a sense of perspective of the work, in favour of a fragile, ephemeral and random visual horizon. Baruzzi uses curls and spirals and with a few perfect signs he gives back the sentiment of a lost image. In the Porta pittura dei riccioli, every curl has a temperature and a precise character able to evoke a history with no need of anything else.
The Porta Pittura is a sculpture with the aim of activating a dynamic use of its series of paintings. The one who buys a Porta Pittura has seven, ten or more canvas ordered in a modular structure to be placed on the floor or on a pedestal. The collector or curator of the Porta Pittura can change the order or sequence of the canvas. Some or all the canvas can be taken from the system and displayed on the wall, even very far from the Porta Pittura. It is possible to create a lot of new combinations of the series of paintings, based on the paintings selected to be displayed.
The Porta Pittura encourages a dynamic use of painting, commonly considered as the most precious and static art; moreover, it questions the dependence between the work of art and its display, its exhibition, that affects people and its use. The many possibilities of exhibition of the Porta Pittura undermine the power of display, opening it up into a playful, changeable and individual dimension, closely related to the person that activates the work.
Translated by Alessio Severo