Faithful to the “credible”
Rossana Cheli
Inverni is a contemporary painter, whose collocation in an artistic context is quite hard to interpret. His easy and immediate key to interpretation hardly finds its place in such a complex time like the one of nowadays’ contemporary art.
Even if the world contemporary art is full of artists inspired by modernism, by the extreme experimentation and by the computer graphic methods of photography (with which they create sort of “serial” works), there’s still a handful of “nostalgic” artists, who still seek for inspiration in the usage of old and traditional materials, as well as in the portraitists and hyperrealists, those who still love the “traditional” way and technique of painting. I’d say Inverni belongs to this category because, even though he has changed during his artistic path, he never gave up his traditional way of painting in favor of something more technological: a clear example are his replicas of ancient copies. One could easily paste or print accurate replicas on canvas, before starting to work on modifications, but that’s not the case of Inverni, who instead works directly on the canvas from the very beginning. That’s the case of his replica of the Tondo Doni painting, or the famous Monna Lisa, which he decided to mark with a very particular trompe l’oeil effect. A return to the classic, a provocation that poses the viewer a question concerning the ultimate goal of art itself. Inverni’s return to the classic isn’t vague and ambiguous, but simple, clear, dosed and characterized by hard work and research in order to give value to the fine art taste. That’s why the key of interpretation to his paintings seems hard to elaborate, while it is simply there, in the painting itself.
Inverni gives his personal interpretation of this artistic crisis, without the necessity of tragic perspectives and tormented soul themes, he simply finds the best way to forcibly encourage the viewer to watch his paintings, in order to make a clear distinction between his original works and the ones of Donatello and Michelangelo, along with their respective replicas. In this context, the painter enhances and emphasizes the fragility of art itself, he reproduces artworks, without changing their original sizes and plays with them in a sarcastic way: that’s the case of the “Portrait of Agnolo Doni”: is there really a portrait hiding under the wrapped paper? The only hints the artist gives about the famous artwork are its dimensions, we can only imagine further details. All this, together with the characteristic sense of melancholy, are the recurring themes in Inverni’s works.
He just doesn’t like to reproduce the original work with frigid hyperrealism, but he’s faithful to the “credible”. That’s why he doesn’t give much space to photorealism. He’s more oriented to dexterity, fantasy and imagination. As an extremely rational author, he lets intellect guide fantasy, all in a very natural way, without falling into the absurd (typical of a very hard to interpret work) and without giving up on his poetic sensitivity, like on his painting depicting a flag, symbol of his personal American Dream.
His certainty lies inside uncertainty and instability of the Real. We do not know the reason why the cardboard boxes are lying there, neither we know where do they come from, some of them are “Made in Italy” or taped together with “fragile” written on them, or torn apart, worn out and corroded by time, the sun, the rain. Those boxes manage to look abandoned but also poetic at the same time.
In Inverni’s cardboard the drawing is replaced by a nice color and by the accurate reproduction of every wrinkle or tear. As said before, the key of interpretation of this painting isn’t ambivalent, but very clear, suitable to everyone in order to make us remember that a wrinkle on paper isn’t just what it seems to us, but represents the act of “thoughtfulness” when we’re looking at it. We don’t even know why his paper are “attached” on the canvas, in a sort of “metaphysical” way. It would be more appropriate for us if they were hanging from bulletin boards, walls or more “ordinary” surfaces. That’s what marks the difference between Inverni and other artists. He just paints them on canvas, he recreates with extreme accuracy every shadow and every wrinkle, conveying to us a peaceful and calm sensation. The more we look at his paintings, the more we are dazzled by our own confusion of mixed feelings, something between enthusiasm and amazement and also a bit of annoyance. We feel like being observed and stripped of our inner reality. Their ‘non word” carries the meaning of human precariousness in its innermost anthropological sense, related to a childish philosophical essence.