GIUSEPPE ALBI, February, 2007, Peter Robertson Gallery, Edmonton

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"Yellow Torsion"

Giuseppe Albi, "Yellow Torsion," 2006, acrylic on Styrene, 90 cm x 90 cm.

GIUSEPPE ALBI

Peter Robertson Gallery, Edmonton

February, 2007

By Gilbert A. Bouchard

Giuseppe Albi has covered a lot of ground as an artist. Nearing his 60th birthday, the long-time Edmonton-based painter can look back at a career that saw him shift from his training as a sculptor to colourful abstract paintings, then migrate to creating painterly weavings that split the difference between two- and three-dimensional art, to his most recent shift to painting two-dimensional works without traditional canvases. “This is 30 years of painting experience coming into play in these works,” says Albi, an Italian-born artist who’s lived in Canada since 1951. “In this series I’m painting directly on polystyrene squares, a material in the family of thermal plastics that shrink and contract at the same rate as acrylic paint, and I’m letting the paint just flow off the edges.” After the paint dries, Albi peels off these free-floating images from his studio counter-tops and mounts them on coated aluminum sheets which are then framed. The goal in this newest series of work is to produce a running series of paintings with a new take on colour. Albi is thrilled with how this particular technique has allowed him to seamlessly produce work in large and small formats. Influenced by a recent trip to Italy and a move to a new downtown Edmonton studio space, Albi is allowing his love of urbanity and architecture to create work that mimics this cosmopolitan density.

Represented by: Peter Robertson Gallery, Edmonton.