Massimo Polello
by Alexia Rizzi
Internationally, Massimo Polello is currently the best known Italian calligrapher. Over recent years he has taken part in major competitions of world standing, given workshops and training on calligraphy and displayed his work in collective and solo national and international exhibitions. After studying the traditional calligraphic styles, Polello geared his personal quest towards the artistic expression of this discipline by creating his own language and an ontologically expressive approach aimed at imparting the culture of calligraphic art in a contemporary idiom.
In Polello’s works the alphabet transcends the typical functionality of the written language and its relative symbolic and abstract value by becoming an image that confers value to the shape and gesture of the sign.
The calligraphic work is no longer a representation but an interaction between the artist, time and memory.
Polello therefore does not restrict himself to the use of traditional techniques, perfectly mastered with a very personal style, but supplements them with expressive media such as videos and projections. By embracing such technology and the art of live performance, he is thus in very close touch with the contemporary artistic avant-garde
By dint of this approach, Polello frees calligraphic art from its bi-dimensionality, placing it in a creative dynamic context and bestowing upon it a monumentality that dovetails with time and space.
Polello superimposes on classic calligraphic techniques stylistic experimentations which are embellished by the use of innovative materials such as resins, varnishes, and unconventional media. Moving away from the stereotyped use of paper and canvasses, he is always on the look-out for recycled materials to which he likes to confer a new identity.
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