Norberto Spina’s practice moves from an autobiographical and collective memory that starts from the retrieval of archive images, old family photographs, moments of daily life and historical and religious iconographies of Italian popular culture, all reworked and superimposed through a pictorial gesture that moves away from any kind of precise definition and restitution. Like fragmented memories that are difficult to visualise with clarity, what manifests itself on the canvas is an imagery given by oblique lashings, sharp and material strokes of oil, acrylic and marker pen that build and at the same time conceal the image in a continuous act of formulation and negation. What remains at the end of this long process of layering, appearing as a wounded image precisely because it has been pushed to its limits.
Norberto Spina (b.1995) is a London based Italian artist who completed his MA in Fin Art at Royal Academy of Arts in 2024 and a BA in painting at Brera Academy, Milan in 2017. He has exhibited widely including Guts Gallery, London (2024); Cassina Project, Milan (2024); Night Café, London (2023); French Place, London (2023); Sadie Coles, London (2022); The Split Gallery, London (2022); Fondazione Giacomo Lercaro, Bologna (2021).
