Pictorial magic by Katia Papaleo protagonist in Vienna

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The Milanese artist Katia Papaleo, already well known abroad thanks to her numerous participations in international fairs and exhibitions, will bring to the Austrian capital seventeen canvases that will be the protagonists of a solo exhibition in the ample spaces of the CityGalleryVienna, at Mahlerstraβe 11, a stone's throw from the famous Opera House and the Secession Palace. The exhibition will take place from 2 to 8 June 2024 and will display some of the artist's most traditional canvases, those belonging to that Magic Realism that she completely revised and adapted to her dreamy and imaginative nature in which reality merges with dreams, entering the symbolic-surreal dimension, and other artworks belonging to a more recent production in which the figurative part mingles with an Abstract Expressionism that never manages to lose contact with the observed and where the colours are inextricably linked to the sensations that the artist wishes to manifest on the canvas.

The exhibition, Katia Papaleo's first presence in Vienna, will be presented by the international art critic Marta Lock and will see an entire room of the spacious gallery space dedicated to her fascinating art, capable of making one dream and at the same time prompting reflection on more conceptual themes, yet incredibly part of an everyday life that is too pragmatically oriented to allow the individual to dwell on it.

Marta Lock describes her art as follows: "The artist Katia Papaleo distances herself from the perfect realist definition, which would constitute her pictorial trait, enriching it with new chromatic possibilities almost as if seeking expressionist unreality, but at the same time she remains bound to the image through which she seems to want to suggest other possibilities, further openings towards the universe of unconsciousness that manifests itself in the form of emotion, blurring the contours and abstracting the atmospheres; not only that, the descriptions are decontextualised, almost tending towards Surrealism, because the images must connect with thoughts, with emotions, with the author's ability to converse with that fantasy world that she shares with Alice's gaze when she entered Wonderland. Her atmospheres are sweet, soft, yet they provoke intense reflections on life, on its flow and on everything that surrounds it while remaining hidden, impalpable and invisible to the eyes, just like the essential mentioned by Antonie de Saint-Exupéry in his masterpiece The Little Prince; here, Katia Papaleo goes in search of magic, that substance of which dreams are made, making her the interpreter of a universe that is poetic and at the same time perfectly immersed in what are the questions and queries of contemporaneity, filtering them however with her positive outlook, oriented to consider every facet from the point of view of beauty, of the enchanted energy that is only revealed through a strongly emotional observational approach, free from the cage of a rationality that could enclose it within pessimism, within fears that generate scepticism and doubts. "

The vernissage will take place on Sunday, 2 June at 5 p.m. and the critical presentation will be followed by a toast to welcome to Vienna the Italian artist who has also recently made a name for herself at the New York Art Fair.

KATIA PAPALEO

Solo exhibition

CityGalleryVienna

Mahlerstraβe 11, 1010 Vienna

Opening Sunday 2 June at 5 pm

2 to 8 June 2024

Opening hours: Monday to Sunday 2 pm to 8 pm