Gianni Dessì

Gianni Dessì was born in Rome in 1955. From the beginning his paintings do not appear forced within the boundaries of the canvas, but extend beyond, on the walls that welcome them as if to emphasize the intent to expand towards a "other" space, beyond the canonical limits of the pictorial surface.

There are numerous exhibitions in Italy and abroad between the 1980s and 1990s intended to arouse the interest by the critics. He attended the Venice Biennials in 1984, 1986 and 1993. A training also linked to avant-garde theatre and the use of combining different expressive languages give his work a completely original character. Emblematic in this regard are the impressive wall interventions made in 1994 for the headquarters of the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris and in 1996 for one of the walls of the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome on the occasion of the XII National Four-Year Art Exhibition.

His work is often accompanied by material doughs, from which emerge archaic and early images: ellipses, rhombi, symbols of infinity, eyes and spirals, cracks and half-spheres populate an esoteric and alienating panorama. Metal structures, now knotted in the center now applied in the form of large plates, as well as volumes sometimes ready to protrude from the canvas, come into tension with the frontality of the work forcing the viewer to continuous movements to guess the extreme complexity of the shapes he observes.

The artist often transfers into his work experiences conducted in scenography. In fact, in the spring of 2002, Dessì was commissioned to design the scenery for Wagner’s Parsifal represented during the Salzburg Easter festival, a production which was conducted by Claudio Abbado and directed by Peter Stein. The performance then travelled to Edinburgh.