Luigi Stoisa "Passeggio ad Amsterdam"

''Tar is not paint but matter, as you know. It absorbs and confuses, and after some hours revea1s tona1ities that were not mine; maybe it unveils, in fading, the colours, making them vanish into its greasy consistency.' Luigi Stoisa (1958) has had a classical painting and drawing education. During a number of years (from 1976 onwards) he made self-portraits in many different styles. Leonardo, Caravaggio and Kounellis ultimately remained his great loves from the art-history. Fascination for the latter is evident from Stoisa's frequent use of black: a lake of tar, black paint on glass, black paintings (gallery Tucci Russo, Turin 1984). ‘Black makes me trespass the threshold into infinity; and everything, the incommensurable becomes perceptible.’ Roundabout 1982 he tries to combine his self-portraits with plastic materials. A series of vessels come into being, painted with tar on the inside, one of them with a Caravaggesque male head in verdigris. The vessel is filled with clear water: the head of Narcissus appears on the bottom. In 1986 he showed these vessels at Prospect '86 in Frankfurt. His installation at Gallery Joost Declercq in Ghendt in that same year had a more daring character: tar-tracks, made by heavy truck-tyres run across the room and ended 'in the air': where the tyres seemed to be stuck high on the side wal1s. In De Appel Luigi Stoisa will show new work from 29 November to 20 December.’ (‘Installation Luigi Stoisa’, Newsletter De Appel, 1 (1986) 4.)