Lavis: lucky meeting between the artists Luigi Penasa and Gentile Polo.

Go shopping and meet great artists from the local and international scene may seem impossible, especially in a small reality like my region of Trentino - Alto Adige, and yet it is possible and it happened precisely this Monday, April 16th with Luigi Penasa and the Rotal artist decorator Gentile Polo. I used to browse with my shopping cart among colorful fruits and vegetables at Lavis' Eurospin when I hear a "Look who's there!" with an enthusiastic Gentile Polo turning a bench to shake hands with a colossus with severe but smiling facial features. Of course, as my brother Damiano would say, it is easy to look like giants close to a meter and sixty centimeters of woman, however I parked my shopping cart and, with a feline step, I approached with discretion hoping to attend the interview. Fortunately, Mr. Gentile Polo with a smile noticed my maneuver and called me with a gesture and presented to colleague Luigi Penasa, artist of the Association of Art Andromeda of Trento. Penasa asks about the subject of identity and the weight of the social ties of the individual and makes it through evanescent portraits, which focuses the expressiveness of the eyes or hands, which stand out against openly decorative backgrounds, like ancient cards wallpaper, molded or collaged.

"... it is a process that can not be governed, I find myself instinctively following untutored times and ways that can be traced back to my sole will." Now it seems to me that this "way of rejecting a way" feels the need to reorganize, to empathize one's own time by returning to timeless figures " (Interview with Luigi Penasa, in UnDo.Net of 24 February 2012)

Stefano Zanella himself wrote:

The work by juxtaposition of pieces refers to a difficult but also ironic work of recomposition, of search for identity. And the same relationship between (pieces of) figure and (pieces of) upholstery is allusive: a loss is not necessarily a drama, one can elaborate a philosophy of life, in which to treasure, for oneself and for others, partial attempts to give some order (some "cosmos") to chaos. Nothing definitive, of course. The figure is a light presence, the detail of the look surprisingly alive and transparent within a face deliberately exposed to slips, to feelings of blur and instability, sometimes surmounted by horns that add other symbolic stratifications and distant mythologies. (QT n. 18, 28 ottobre 2006Monitor)

For several years, however, does not keep a personal, in fact, he confessed to his friend Gentile Polo that in times of crisis like the current ones it is more economically convenient to dedicate themselves to teaching than to the Art itself. The desire to exhibit, however, is latent and confession shows it to the colleague Gentile Polo that he would not mind exposing the work, which keeps well rolled up, on the floor of a gallery to offer the public a more participatory and emotional reading of the works. This admission made the friend Gentile Polo smile, understanding that last autumn he anticipated his colleague by exposing some preliminary statements of the works exhibited during the bi - personal "Zapige" held from 14 to 31 October 2017 with Sabrina Broll at the Area Archaeological site of Palazzo Thun in Trento (Italy). http://www.studio-martorelli.net/category/mostre-vernissage/ By agreeing, the two artists Luigi Penasa and Gentile Polo exchanged data and hoped to be able to collaborate again in the near future.

(Lucia Martorelli - Gentile Polo Art Studio)