Bislacchi
Bislacchi (1995), pseudonym of Matteo Santacroce, is an Italian-born and London-based visual artist. In 2014, after he gained a Diploma in graphic-design and photography, he moved to London to study art. Bislacchi graduated in 2018 with a BA in Fine Art from City and Guilds of London Art School.
The physical exploration of the confines of the canvas support is at the core of his practice. Bislacchi's most recent works reference wall construction motifs as a source of inspiration to inform his creative process, conceiving the application of canvas as a constructional element to make work.
Bislacchi’s paintings feature long strips of painted canvas that he initially hand twists and subsequently stretches over a stretcher support. Every single piece is orchestrated according to vertical and horizontal arrangements resulting in a voluptuous construction pattern that has a strong reminiscence with a mural structure. In doing so, the making process of the work is translated into a symbolic construction model that he strongly associates to a wall, made with canvas and paint instead of lime and bricks.
Therefore, by treating the canvas as such his attempt is to dismantle it from its established function as a support to paint on, beginning a process that allows him to build the painting from scratch. Recently, he applied a similar approach for a series of works on paper replacing the use of canvas with paper.