Pietro Costa /ri·tràt·ti/ /ˈpôrˌtrāts/
Museo di Palazzo Pretorio, Prato, 2022
From the press release:
(…) Pietro Costa, /ri·tràt·ti/ /ˈpôrˌtrāts/, curated by Chiara Spangaro, presents for the first time to the public the selection of the portraits made by the artist between 2018 and 2022.
The exhibition deepens the artist's bond with the Tuscan city, where he worked on the first in the series of family portraits - The Gori Family Portrait, (2019), comprising of eight portraits, spanning three generations, starting with the patriarch Giuliano Gori, founder of Fattoria di Celle, collector and patron of Prato. The exhibition also includes other portraits of individuals and families, such as those of father-son Sandro and Gianni Veronesi, other citizens of Prato and Italy.
The works are a more updated selection of the bloodworks series, which the artist has undertaken since the late eighties. Bloodworks looks at the issues of identity between art and science and the concept of physical and biological portrait as it pertains to representation of the individual and of community.
The works are created with the blood of the subject being portrayed, used as a pigment between two mylar sheets. Made on commission, these conceptual works retain the biological character of the commissioner together with the environmental data of the spaces where the work has been made (…)