"PAGAN POETRY": NEW WORK | GIORGIO TENTOLINI

(b. 1978, Italy)

Using wire mesh as his medium, Giorgio Tentolini creates hyper-realistic portraits based on some of history’s most revered sculpture in a body of work he has titled, PAGAN POETRY. Pagan, a word often used to describe a person who worships idols, or someone who is motivated by desires for sensual pleasures, it seems fitting.

Born in Casalmaggiore, Italy in 1978, Giorgio Tentolini studied graphic arts at the Art Institute Toschi in Parma, and graduated with degrees in design and communication from the Universita di Progetto in Reggio Emilia. Tentolini began his professional career as a photographer, garnering significant awards for his memorable work. Wire mesh is the current medium of his artistic interest for the meditative levity that it puts into the image, pictorial work which crosses the boundaries of reality and sculpture, blending ancient with contemporary. Each of Tentolini’s works are masterfully created in a careful and slow reconstruction that takes place with the study of light and the etching of layers upon layers of wire. The subject of a recent exhibition at the Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia in Rome, Tentolini has exhibited extensively in museums and galleries across Europe, in London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, the Principality of Monaco, the island of Mykonos and throughout Italy. His works are held in the permanent collections of the Museo d’Arte Ravenna and Museo di Salo in Italy and have been exhibited numerous times at the Palazzo Reale in Milan. Giorgio Tentolini lives and works in Casalmaggiore, Reggio Emilia, and Milan.

ESTELLA is honored to serve as Giorgio Tentolini’s exclusive representative within the United States.

“After my artistic studies, I started my professional path as a photographer for magazines and fashion companies. My artworks come from my photographs and they are the result of the breakdown of the image in chiaroscuro levels obtained from the overlap of different materials, such as wire mesh, tulle, nets in pvc or resin and paper. These materials, overlapped one over the other, recreate the chiaroscuro of the image without any aid of pigment. When I choose the subject of my artworks, I use recognizable subjects such as faces and classical statues. For me, the main protagonist is the material even more than the represented subject.… The net is a symbol of our present. The net is the internet. The net is a filter and now more than ever, filters are an important presence in our lives. What does the net provide to us? It gives us lots of images and these images get lost. This is the reason why my images seem to fade away. If you look at them from afar, you can perceive an image. As you get closer, the image becomes, more and more, an abstraction. In a certain way, the net is also a trap, because it is something that puts us in a cage and influences us in our choices, in our perception. That is the reason I choose to represent through the net. “ - Giorgio Tentolini, January 2021.