Luca Tidei
Anyone Watching From Mars Would Be Scratching Their Head

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Anyone Watching From Mars Would Be Scratching Their Head, is Luca Tidei’s third exhibition at Espace GAIA.

Having recently graduated with an in MA Fine Art (Painting), from the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, UK, Luca has matured as an artist since his inaugural solo show in 2009. He now delves deeper both technically and emotionally to produce a series of super-slick yet complex visual story boards that play on the polarity between the rulers of the financial world and the world of mere mortals – portrayed as 1950s-style females.

“My idea is to capture concepts and images of everyday life and to make people reflect upon them. Events, which describe the ordinary and which happen while we are busy paying attention to other things, (in the case of the current show: the stock market), often hide surprising truths which should stimulate cognition.”

The title of the show pays homage to Warren Buffet's famous quote on the irony of gold: “It gets dug out of the ground in Africa. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.”

While a jeweller or commodities trader would disagree with Mr Buffet’s take on gold’s lack of utility, the quote probably says more about his rather frugal disregard for material wealth than the irony of gold. However, it is a quote which gives the viewer food for thought and inspires us to engage with Luca's depicted characters. 

Luca's aesthetic is quite deliberate; his use of a homogeneous and simple palette is directly related to colour theory, and indirectly to fashion. Outlines of the characters are in blue (Luca’s favourite colour, in its different shades can express and symbolise almost anything). The shade use in the current works is Cobalt blue. Its pigments were rare to find in the past and it is still is one of the most expensive hues.

Luca stretches his own canvases using cotton duck. He primes the horizontal surface with several layers of acrylic primer, to make the surface elastic and smooth, allowing him to paint more precisely. He then applies a transparent acrylic glue to the edges so as to show the rough side of the canvas. This contrast between precision and imperfection is a visual manifestation of his preoccupation with antitheses.

Biography and Exhibition History

Luca Tidei lives and works between Geneva and London

Education:

2011 MA Fine Art (Painting), University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, UK

Solo Exhibitions:

2011 Anyone Watching From Mars Would Be Scratching Their Head, Espace GAIA, Geneva

2011 Recurring Patterns, Galerie Tafkaj, Geneva

2010 VIP, Espace GAIA, Geneva

2009 Paradoxically I Survived It, Espace GAIA, Geneva

2005 Luca Tidei, Forum Après-Demain, Lausanne

Group Exhibitions:

2011 MAde, Hockey Gallery, Farnham, UK

2004 Galerie ID, Carouge

www.tidei.com