Filippo Minelli

About

The exhibition will focus on his striking and celebrated series Silence/Shapes, in which Minelli uses smoke bombs to explore the aesthetics of the sublime.

His vividly coloured columns of smoke are landed like aliens in wildest and undisturbed nature, creating ethereal and dramatic imagery. The smoke bomb, for so long associated within our minds with protest and chaos becomes beautiful, expressive, eloquent.

Minelli began his series Silence/Shapes in 2009. The use of the smoke bomb as an artistic device arose from his own political activism. Social and political issues have always stood at the heart of Minelli's ouvre, and he is inspired by ideas of demonstration and protest. A natural step from his graffiti and street art, the camera allowed Minelli to make the smoke bomb, a wholly transient form of protest, endure.

Filippo Minelli was born in Brescia, Italy in 1983. His work has been extremely well received and has been exhibited throughout Europe. Minelli's work was exhibited alongside that of legendary graffiti artist, Shepard Fairey, in a recent group exhibition at Somerset House, London. Minelli's series Silence/Shapes is an ongoing project, and was exhibited as part of the Venice Biennale in 2011.