top of page

Luigi Filograno (Puglia - Italy), has used various expressive techniques in the past (oil / acrylic / polymaterial on canvas or other media), but in the last twenty years mainly the drawing on wood and sometimes mixed techniques. Alongside the 2D works (poplar wood boards or in the past canvases), he has created 3D works or sculptures in eucalyptus wood, with iron and steel and clay with which he has shaped the natural wooden essence. The wooden surfaces of both types of his works deliberately appear rough, engraved, encrusted, full of roughness. A sort of metaphor of the human condition with its harshness and its cruelty. Filograno aims to revisit the art of the past in a contemporary key, with references to Italian medieval art and the Renaissance, but it also has many connections with contemporary art, not necessarily figurative. His initial research theme was the yearning for a condition of equilibrium on the part of man, on several levels, human and existential, environmental, political. A broader reflection on the finiteness of existence, on the link between eros and death, on the ephemeral nature of many presumed values, such as fame, wealth, power, beauty, subsequently resulted. A recurring research theme was also that concerning the erroneous and perverse energy policies used by contemporary man which have caused the current environmental imbalance. His denunciation in this field was further testified by his sculptural production where wooden logs are "raped" by steel or iron rods. Filograno, an engineer with an architectural focus, has developed work experiences alongside that of an artist in interior design, which have influenced his sculptures and their spatial positioning.

He has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including the 2011 Venice Biennale (Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Turin-Sala Nervi-Padiglione Italia and Palazzo Ca 'Zanardi-Venice), the Contemporary Art Fair in Copenhagen (Art Nordic) 2018; prizes in the design section such as Basi Prize 2011 (Tuscany), and some works are present in museums such as Museum Allotropya (Delphi - Greece) and Boston.
Publications: "Materika" - 2018 - C. A. Strazzeri; "Beauty and the Roots" - 2014 - C. Strazzeri - ISBN 978-88-89458-04-4; "Luigi Filograno: Of life, death, love and sin" - 2016 - Ninni Esposito Gallery; "Luigi Filograno: It is not all roses" - 2013 - Editions Galleria F. Foresta - ISBN 978-88-940010-3-7; Apuliamagazine - 2014 - A. Dall'Olmo; Basi Contemporary Art Award 2011 - S. Petronici / B. Madrigali; Espoarte 2012 - R. Maggi - ISSn 2035-9772; Tibet Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2011 - R. Maggi; Amisuraduovo - 2007 - Spaziosei Gallery; KosaKaos - 2010 - E. Govi; Modi, Bari.

Some of the passages of the presentation text by Marilena Di Tursi at the personal exhibition "Life, death, love and sin" (Galleria Ninni Esposito - Bari) read as follows:
"Luigi Filograno's latest works present figures, images, myths and symbols, drawn from an eclectic iconographic basin in which they live, Goya's fatal omens, Botticelli's intangible and seductive beauty, Dalì's imaginary abstraction, gestural violence by Immerdorff, on different linguistic latitudes, Damien Hirst and Rebecca Horn, Jan Saudek, Robert Mapplethorpe, David Nebreda, Joel Peter Witkin. (......).
They are complex scores, as the artist calls them, redundant, baroque in their references, more or less decorative or intriguing, supported by different techniques on an ambiguous style between photography and dexterity. Filograno interprets the drawing and processing of painting, managing a "post" practice, a cultured mannerism full of estrangements, capable of holding together disparate visions with a background in which broad-spectrum cultural conditioning lies. (......) ".

 

bottom of page