Simone Berti's 'Soprattutto alberi' at Schiavo Zoppelli Gallery

Simone Berti (Adria, 1966), known since the late 1990s for whimsical yet critical depictions of people, animals, and objects on precarious prostheses and scaffolding, now shifts focus to trees in his solo exhibition 'Soprattutto alberi' at Schiavo Zoppelli Gallery in Milan. The works show trees firmly rooted, contrasting earlier instability. Paintings like Untitled (2004) and Untitled (2019) feature fibrous, woody forms on neutral backgrounds, with colors ranging from sulfurous to acidic. Untitled (2020) merges deer antlers with tree branches, suggesting a unified natural metamorphosis. Luca Cerizza's catalogue text references Italo Calvino's fairy tale observations to describe this primordial 'unitary substance of all things.' Berti's brushwork is slow and thin, mimicking tree growth. The exhibition runs in 2022.