Charly Galuppo and the fascinating contemporaneity of a classic artist
CULTURA BA
Bruma Púrpura (Purple Mist), curated by María Carolina Baulo, will be exhibited at Centro Cultural Borges from March 30th onward.
Bruma Púrpura will be opening at Centro Cultural Borges on Thursday, March 30th at 7 pm. Artist Charly Galuppo faces, with surprising skill, the challenge of producing realistic images of the female body, a rigorous and strikingly contemporary work of art.
The exhibition, curated by María Carolina Baulo, constitutes 20 canvasses of different sizes that, on the one hand, refrain from the easy resource of exhibitionism to make way for subtle sensuality and, on the other, in the game of showing and hiding, create a disturbing universe that oscillates between what’s real and what’s imagined.
“Galuppo explores an intimacy that’s not his own,” expresses critic Rodrigo Alonso. “He delves into the vital universe of some teenage girls whose everyday life swings among puerility, boredom and continuous seduction, and he portrays it with the calm thoroughness of a surgeon’s. To achieve this, he works over the photographs taken by the protagonists themselves, who bring their participant perspective to the situations and framing. A perspective that is crossed by the visual configurations of our times, ranging from instant photographs, peeping curiosity, and selfies”.
As for Baulo, she asserts: “Charly Galuppo’s work shows exquisite craft and high technical skill. It is just the kind of work that, compared to many of today’s artistic proposals, finds itself at the center of debate due to its realism. Does the current scene accept the persistence of certain choices that seem to belong to other times? The XXI century experiences a democratization that finds no precedent and allows for ‘anything goes’, but that should also face questioning that puts the artist’s work in crisis…”
Charly Galuppo was born in Buenos Aires in 1976 and studied graphic design, painting, drawing, photography and Art Analysis. He has held seven individual exhibitions and participated in numerous collective ones. Among many awards, he received the following: A Mention at the National Hall of Painting, 2nd Prize, Salen SAAP (Sociedad Argentina de Artistas Plásticos), 1st Prize, Braque Gallery, 3rd Prize, Espacio 10 Gallery, 1st Prize, FAF National Hall (Federación Argentina de Fotógrafos) and 1st Prize UADE Photography Contest, 2003.
“Charly Galuppo is a realist artist and his work is as contemporary as can be any work of art that seeks to hold the conventions of representation in check, that makes room for reflection and presents a challenge for the viewer, proposing them a new perspective,” reflects Baulo “But it’s also a challenge for the artist himself, aiming not to copy his own work or show off the technique he has mastered.”
“Andy Warhol once said that he would have liked to a be a machine” Alonso recollects. “However, though Charly Galuppo seems to behave as one, it is clearly not his objective. Galuppo doesn’t quit his role as author. He is conscious of that place, values and puts it into practice. There’s a clear intention in his work to examine the world we live in and invite us to reflect on it. And in doing so, he highlights one of the main potentialities that have characterized painting throughout its history.”