Bruno Catalano

ARTISTIC APPROACH  – Presentation –

In Bruno Catalano’s path, art is the experience of a technique and a material. But art is also a particular look at humanity, an acuity that is cultivated and shared in the creation of works. His “Travellers” series, which has become emblematic in a few years, illustrates all the intensity that is at play here. In the great diversity of models that the artist has represented, he was drawn to an attitude, to a few details that concealed an intense humanity. From this he created bronze figures. They represent men, women and children who move forward, baggage in hand, driven by determinations that the public is left free to imagine. 

In the end, it doesn’t matter where they come from or where they go. Bruno Catalano’s sculpture catches time around these individual and anonymous trajectories, leaving room for introspection. And the silhouettes open wide, physically split, torn like paper down the middle. The bust floats above the legs as if by a miracle. Only the loaded suitcase makes the link between the thinking head and the walking feet. The sculptor’s gesture echoes universal emotions by suggesting that absence, lack, separation are constitutive elements of any identity. And it doesn’t take long to realise that Bruno Catalano’s works are traversed, if not innervated, by the landscapes that host them. 

In his artworks, figuration is enhanced by a metaphorical, even dreamlike power. For they speak to the feelings of each individual, and also manage to awaken a secret emotion, unanimous and inscribed in our flesh. Bruno Catalano tells how life itself shapes faces and bodies, and how human flows, groupings and movements end up building and animating cities. His sculptures are of course forms of wax and bronze, but they are also the expression of an art that is above all democratic. An art that makes each figure a monument to an intimate humanity. Bruno Catalano sees heroes where ordinary men and women stand.