Michele Costi

La pittura visionaria di Michele Costi è una pittura che appare sofferta fin dal primo sguardo ma che subito dopo spicca il volo con la giocosità della fiaba, che però non comporta un’operazione nostalgica rivolta ad un’infanzia irrimediabilmente lontana e irripetibile…  …bensì diventa affermazione della forza propulsiva della fantasia ormai matura, che non prova imbarazzo ad accostare a questa specie di “Milione” dell’anima i miti classici e cristiani. Un repertorio di “scenette” avvolte in un ritmo formale che accosta un primitivismo rouoltiano alle accensioni espressioniste di un biblico Nolde. Piccoli amori, profondi dolori che risuonano attraverso gli anfratti bui della metropoli, bevute colossali e maledette, marachelle pinocchiesche e improvvisazioni picaresche: tutto ciò confluisce come in un torrente in piena. Tutto l’universo figurativo dell’artista emblematicamente pulsa, come il sangue nelle vene, ma anche come l’alternarsi degli stati d’animo. Così si alternano luce e buio, così si alterna la materia dei colori, ora pastosa e drammaticamente confusa, ora ariosa e trasparente come un cielo di Canaletto. Si tratta di una pittura di confine, dove la disillusione verso l’essere umano finisce lì dove inizia la ribellione contro una volontà dal carattere divino. Si innesta così nelle opere un senso del peccato avvertito ma violentemente rifiutato.

Frutto di diversi viaggi all’interno dell’Europa, la sua visione approda infine a Berlino, dove ancora oggi il Costi abita. E’ infatti la rinata capitale tedesca la metropoli che (assieme a Venezia, abbandonata poco dopo gli studi all’Accademia), lo influenza maggiormente nella luce e nei colori. Per lui oggi ogni mostra o esposizione dei suoi lavori, rassomiglia un po’ all’approdare della nave alla banchina. Nulla di più e nulla di meno che il tempo necessario a tracciare la prossima rotta.

Michele Costi, At a glance Michele Costi’s visionary painting appears a tormented one, but it soon takes flight with the playfulness of fables. This however does not imply a feeling of nostalgia for bygone childhood irretrievably lost, indeed, it is the manifestation of a mature imaginative urge that fully matches this sort of ‘progress’ of the soul to classical and Christian myths. A repertoire of sketches whose formal rhythm blends Rouault’s primitivism to flashes from biblical Nolde’s expressionism.

Trivial love-stories, deep sorrows echo through the dark depths of the metropolis; great damned booze-ups, Pinocchio-style rogueries and picaresque improvisations all merge as in a raging torrent. The artist’s figurative world symbolically pulsates like blood in the veins, but also like alternating states of mind. Light alternates with darkness, just as the matter of colours is soft or dramatically confused or airy and transparent like a Canaletto sky. It is a border painting in which disappointment about man ends where the rebellion against a divinely characterised will begins. His works are therefore pervaded by a sense of sin, which is violently rejected the very moment it is felt.

The result of several journeys into the heart of Europe, his vision ends up in Berlin, where Costi still lives. In fact, the re-born German capital is the city that most influences his use of light and colours (along with Venice, which he left soon after graduating from the Academy of the Fine Arts). To him any exhibition of his works is somehow like a ship moored along the quay. No more no less than the time required to plot the next course.
Michele Costi
30.11.1970 born at Castelfranco Veneto.
1988 graduates from Liceo Artistico, Treviso
1989 enrols at the Academy of the Fine Arts, Venice, Scene Design dept.; he will later interrupt his studies to work at a scene design workshop.
1989-93 attends the Painting dept. of Venice Academy and graduates with a thesis on painter Osvaldo Licini.
1991 organises a painting exhibition with works by patients of former Treviso asylum.
1992 helps a group of convicts from a borstal realise a wall painting at Treviso.
1993-96 moves to Venice where he realises happenings and installations on ‘food and poetry’ with some colleagues. Holds poetic reading-soirées in public places in Venice, Treviso, and Bologna.
1998 works in the field of stone and painting restoration in the Veneto Region. Realises a poetic-musical event, ‘Condotta Immor(t)ale’ at the Avogaria Theatre, Venice.
1999 writes and illustrates some fables for children, which he recites as a storyteller, with his friend Silvano Ober at Venice Carnival.
1997-2002 specialises in the reproduction of XVIII century oil paintings, which he makes on commission both in Italy and in Germany.
2000 as an actor and scene designer he takes part in the music-hall ‘Cinderella’, Portugal.
2001-04 moves to Berlin where he resumes painting, holds personal exhibitions and takes part in collective events (in particular the one held at Eva Poll Gallery, Berlin).