Parodos
“NOIR TIME” BY PIETRO FINELLI
Italian artist`s Pietro Finelli’s artworks explores the genre of classical cinema, known as film noir (black film). The term is used to define the Hollywood crime dramas _ gangster films or thrillers made in the period between 1940 and 1950. They are characterized by black-and-white styling, reminiscent of German Expressionist films, a literally and figuratively dark atmosphere, a behind-the-scenes voice, and a crime scene. A femme fatale character is an integral part of the noir genre. The most famous noir films include The Maltese Falcon, The Big Combo, Out of the Past, and others.
In the Noir Time exhibition, drawing on the structure and aesthetics of the noir cinema, Pietro Finelli intertwines painting and the noir cinematic footage in such a way that it becomes unclear where we see the film and where we have painting. On complementing each film picture with an illustrated image, the author explores how these connotations that bind metropolitan men and women open a living nerve in human relationships.
P. Finelli transforms his paintings into segments of the film and thus creates a mysterious narrative where the cinematic scene sharpens the sense of a past or a future action. In the moment when the film is stopped, the continuity of space and time in painting reveals the point of contact between the film director’s truth and the artist _ viewer’s perception. Finelli’s photographically precise painting does not quote a film _ it is not a representation of a cinematic scene by other means of expression. The artist abstracts each scene selected from the films with surgical precision.
P.Finelli is impressed by the unique structure of doors, hallways, and room fragments in the films and the frequent transitions from light to dark, thus the presence of the protagonist against the background of those contrasts is perceived as a template reminiscent of something familiar yet transferred to a new environment and a different atmosphere.
In the installation Noir Time, P. Finelli visually develops the conflicts created by his favourite film directors, causing the viewer to question what he sees and triggering a desire to grapple with visual conventions. At the same time, the author seeks to have the viewer not as a passive observer, but a part of the exposition, supplementing the visual dynamics of space and time with his presence. In this way, the exposition is transformed into a living epicenter of these visual-spatial connections, a one-action frame, and a single piece of art.
During the project presentation, P. Finelli collaborated with Klaipeda fashion designer Sonata Zizi.
About the author
Pietro Finelli (1957) studied architecture at the Federico II University of Naples. He is an artist, exhibition curator and art theorist who lives and works in Milan. He has exhibited his creative work in art galleries, museums, cultural centers in Rome, Milan, Turin, Naples, Benevento (Italy), New York (USA), Geneva (Switzerland), Charleroi, La Louvre (Belgium), Buenos Aires (Argentina) and more.