Pippo Patruno's 'Archivio sentimentale' in Monopoli one year after his death

A year after his death, Pippo Patruno (Monopoli, 1955–2023) is celebrated with a 40-work exhibition at Biblioteca “La Rendella” in Monopoli. Curated by Carmelo Cipriani and Antonella Marino, 'Archivio sentimentale' spans his four-decade career, highlighting his minimalist painting. The show begins with modular plastic works, moves through linguistic explorations where words become autonomous subjects on canvas, and includes pieces with repeated tonal shading within geometric frames. Patruno also created graphic textures listing scientific names on white backgrounds, suggesting infinite taxonomies. His practice embraced accumulation, as seen in installations storing art materials, magazines, vinyl records (Woodstock), Mao's little red book, and photos of Jan Palach and Italian soldiers in Africa. He called these 'derive' (drifts)—heroic, poetic, dramatic—producing collages transferred to digital prints, disrupted by a perforated central word. His final works aimed to send memories to a 'remote' future, acknowledging the impossibility of complete archiving.