Hye young Kim

Valerio Berruti, 30 years old this year, lives and works in a church in Verduno, Italy. He usually paints fresco, makes a drawing of characters on the linen fabric with the rough and coarse feeling or paper of unique texture (traditional paper of Korea for this exhibition) and installs the works without frames. The works without any frames help the visitors to feel them more directly and more friendly as being naturally harmonized with the environmental circumstances of the site including the motion of light or air.
 
Such familiar feeling from Valerio Berruti’s works is not only because of the materials or display methods of canvas. He deals with only the ‘character’ on his works. His characters are put on the entirely ‘neutral’ space without any explanation on the background. They don’t gaze at only the viewers nor make any specific actions. They only exist absentmindedly on the canvas like character illustration that is extremely simplified rather than they show the ‘identity’ because they don’t have even any expressions. However, we can obscurely guess the relationship such as friends, brothers and sisters or family. Thus, the words such as anonymity, impersonality, neutrality, carelessness and universality will characterize the works of Berruti.
 
Paradoxically, we interpret his works simply expressing the excessively general materials with our unique point of view. Those who see the works of Berruti remember the friends and family who would remain only in the old album or the self in the childhood. We reflect our memory and thoughts on the works and change the characters on the works to our unique icons. Furthermore, his drawing seems to be a little raw and incomplete. It also induces mysterious nostalgia from us along with the main theme of his works, a child. He doesn’t hesitate to select Nara Yoshimoto as the artist who has the influence on him the most. It may be because they have in common in pursuing the innocence like a child.
Valerio Berruti is the artist proving the fact that something simple and ordinary will induce the most general emotion in some aspects while the modern art is very complicated.