ROBERTO RIZZO | De pictura | AL’S OFFICE
March 15 - April 17, 2026
I am a painter. The space of my painting is physically relative, but ideally absolute. The internal space of my paintings is conventionally absolute, that is, autonomous and independent from both a perceptual and conceptual point of view, and at the same time physically relative to everything around it. Therefore, it is the absolute that lies within the relative and not vice versa.
Starting from Lucio Fontana's cut as a structural element acquired by the space of contemporary painting, I reconstruct that long experience of deconstruction processes of the twentieth century avant-gardes.Reconstructing deconstruction. Not a return to order, but an elaboration that contains that memory without removing it. A phrase by Picasso comes to mind: "Painting is a blind man’s profession." He was well aware that the image in painting is the least of the problems. What is important is all that comes before: the image is the consequence of a process. The painting process, the elaboration, the stratification, the construction and destruction of forms. It is the consequence of the struggle, even in a positive sense, with the space, with the painting. A process of appropriation, of cognition. The image arrives at the end, almost unconsciously. Awareness of my analytical presumtions that define the surface of my paintings allows me to liberate the process of painting reconstruction. In my paintings there are always two forms, that are a synthesis of the history of painting, figures and objects on the background. Their color, their essence, changes when they cross the void which cuts the surface of the painting.
Roberto Rizzo (1967) lives and works in Milan, Italy. Among the main solo exhibitions, Roberto Rizzo - Paintings in Milan in 2002, Painting the Present in London in 2005 and in Milan in 2006, Roberto Rizzo in Viterbo in 2007, Meridiani e paralleli in Milan in 2016, De posizione in Milan in 2020, Bête comme un peintre in Milan in 2023. His paintings have been exhibited in numerous group exhibitions in Europe in Trieste, Dublin, Paris, Milan, Venice, Mantua, Turin, Rome, London, Rotterdam, Todi, Viterbo, Athens, Belfast. He exhibits his work for the first time in New York at 57W57Arts. His work is in the collections of the Benaki Museum in Athens and the MO.C.A. – Montecatini Contemporary Art Museum in Montecatini Terme. Essays on his work were written by Giovanni Maria Accame, Angela Madesani and Barry Schwabsky, among the others. Texts by him were published in several art books and catalogues including Parola d’artista. Dall’esperienza aniconica: scritti di artisti italiani 1960-2006 edited by Giovanni Maria Accame, 2007. He teaches at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, where he graduated in 1989.