Carmelo Lettere
"Painting always requires intelligence and a calling, even more than systems and technique; but above all, it requires energy.
And just as time knows no rest, energy knows no ends; its source is inexhaustible. In art there has always been, I believe, a philosophical
approach and a poetic one. A shout, a howl, a moan or a burp have for us the same eloquence as a group of notes emitted by an operatic
voice in past centuries. But without transfiguration, without rhetorical mediation, creative adaptation, without esthetic synthesis,
experience neither becomes fixed nor is suspended; it disappears in the process of being lived. Whether you speak of intelligence or
sentiment, or of both ( in the sense of "emotional reason" ), it's always a matter of interpretive variables situated according to a particular
time and place. The easier a circus number appears, the more perfect it is, and the more masterly is the deception. The trick consists in
keeping grace, but also its opposite, accident and misfortune , hidden from the audience. Panic is often part of the game and the
imminence of error or uncertainty is a fruitful way to engage attention. But the rapture of possession and identification is, when it's there,
a higher mystery. It is no longer a trick, a convention, a trade, an illusion tied to the anxiousness that everything end well; but
suspension, identification, magic; it is art! If your voice is not song, how can your song be voice?"
Carmelo Lettere
Translated by Nancy Canepa
New Paintings by Carmelo Lettere might be available after his return from Italy
For more information on Carmelo Lettere please Contact Studio 47.