Gianni Cestari
Immagini dal Mare
(Images from the Sea)

The works of artist Gianni Cestari, of Bondeno, Emilia-Romagna, Italy, will be exhibited in the Charlotte and Philip Hanes Art Gallery at Wake Forest University, January 10-February 10, 2008. Cestari has an established presence in Emilia-Romagna, and has exhibited widely in Italy and Europe.

Cestari's art seems to swirl out of the confluence of past and present, from the very beginnings of the idea of "globalization" and recurrent long distance travel and trade, to our present interconnectedness. His work also addresses a common human desire for escape and exploration. The sensations of sea, earth, sky inform much of his art. The mixed-media works in this exhibition combine images and text, and are permeated with a sense of elemental forces. In various degrees of abstraction, the works evoke sea, fluidity and flight, vectors and travel, winged myth and lived reality; realms that, like maps, are as much imaginary as empirical.

Despite our current anxiety and frustration with travel, many of us still have the urge to move around the globe. Cestari's art arises from some of those same impulses, which propelled Vespucci and Columbus on perilous voyages and inspired the cartographers who now provide him with the material for his imagination. Prompted by the remaining list of illustrations, he has embarked on "re-imagining" the maps which have been removed from a famous 1691 Venetian world atlas. A central part of the exhibition, the Atlante Veneto and his subsequent re-visionings tap into ideas of travel, wanderlust, and of cartography as a way of projecting how we would like the world to be as much as an illustration of how it actually appears. In this way, Cestari's art arcs across time and connects places.

Paul Bright
Assistant director, Hanes Art Gallery

Gianni Cestari lives works in Bondeno, (province of Ferrara), Italy, where he was born in 1946. Following his education and training, he began working with acrylic in hyper-and surrealistic approaches. The chromatic effects, restless shapes and light properties of water have interested him for some time. More recently his work has explored broader, more gestural approaches and the freer handling of materials, combined with subtle figuration. He also works as a designer and book illustrator. Cestari has shown throughout Europe, including Finland, Wales, Germany, Belgium, Ukraine, Russia, Portugal, and extensively in Italy. This will be his first solo show in the US.