Playing with poetics in a “copied” reality
Giampaolo Trotta
At first glance, Inverni’s works might give an impression of hyperrealism but […]His painting style, as a matter of fact, sort of deletes the Real while gets closer and closer to paroxysm. With a solid technique and preparation, Inverni undoubtedly inherited his talent form his father Francesco. His paintings are very traditional in both the use of canvas and the material composition of colors, such as wax pastels and oil […] He doesn’t feel the need to resort to 20th century’s avant-garde techniques. His paintings are neither too academic nor too traditionalist, but extremely modern and suggestive. The themes of his works are never predictable as well (like landscapes or people) but even though Inverni does not portray wide landscapes, large inner spaces, people or ordinary life scenes, he can still be considered a painter of figuration, in a minimalist and absolute sense. The setting seems to vanish and the “portrayed” objects […] manage to acquire symbolic value and a precise psychological meaning referred to his own past, in order to foresee the future. Study painting, not en plain air; simple and austere still lives, which seem to fluctuate in an empty rough wall, with deadened and faint colors, tend to become metaphysical and unveil their soul with the help of memories, photos and pieces of paper of old worn out elementary school notebooks, all through a very effective nostalgic afflatus. Another remarkable element are the pieces of duct tape, accurately painted with trompe l’oeil technique. The rough canvas, typical of Inverni’s style, is covered with stucco, which makes it look like made of shiny marble or alabaster, and also presents some elements typical of plaster. The plastered walls, represented by Inverni as as worn out and decayed over time, become the protagonists of his canvases, together with pieces of paper, some of which are used, some stained with ink, while some other are still white […]. Everything talks about the human being, even though, as said before, the man itself is not present. […] There are surfaces on which are painted hanging thorn pieces of paper, some other are scribbled and stained with paint, like walls in the city. Some icons of modern society are also present, such as Coca Cola, a remarkable symbol of the American Pop Art, which eventually became the emblem of globalization. These elements convey us to an inner world, where History seldom shows itself to our conscience. History, and everyday stories as well, violently emerge from those yellowing and ruined papers, decayed, torn apart by the tough life experiences (even though the artist is still young). Some of the papers are still completely white, modern, like the one used for printing, some other are unused empty, waiting to be written on, as well as marked by chromatic stains, seemingly explaining those sensations hidden in the innermost part of the Freudian psyche. The time of memory, then, becomes the time of soul, like the stories behind Inverni’s works: they become stories of life, hanging in the balance between present and past. Everything is relative, full of meanings differing from the original ones: a painted pipe would recall Magritte, it isn’t just a pipe. Melancholic metaphysics, with a bit of romantic tradition, conditioned by Füssli’s dreamlike-visionary reality, from the German romantic symbolism of Boecklin, to Vermeer’s realistic interior reality , from Magritte’s surrealism to the chromatic variety and eclecticism of the American Pop Art. Inverni’s art is able to mutate into storytelling and has yet to come to its final stage, as the author realizes that the only human certainty lies in the continuous and unclear becoming: no lies or falsities […] but a sort of “reality”, copied with our soul’s eyes […] the virtuosity in the representation of the wrinkles and folds on the paper, the light and dark contrast given by a starkly oblique light which emphasizes shadows, touching softly the other objects […] Inverni shows us his reinterpretation of the original pictorial act, creative, as for the impression of essentiality conveyed by the childish doodles, but full of references to the monochrome paintings and the 20th-century avant-garde […] Once again, the trompe l’oeil technique undergo a sort of modernization, giving us a view on the urban sections and the decayed streets of modern cities, as well as on the world of graffiti […] However, Inverni doesn’t portray this environment with modern ways, such as digital photography, but marks walls and urban elements, with the traditional oil on canvas technique. In this way, Inverni links past and present, oriented to tomorrow’s discoveries and experimentation.