Cristiano Petrucci Italy, b. 1974

If, in an initial phase of his artistic production, Cristiano Petrucci focuses on the study of language, communication, and human expression, in a later phase his work becomes dominated by processes that govern the evolution of life in its most primordial forms. Petrucci moves away from figuration to embark on a path aimed at overturning the perspective of observation and redirecting it toward the internal structure of things, the organic architecture of matter.

At the beginning of his artistic career, the artist gravitates toward conceptual pop, devoting himself to the semiotics of faces and to the nonverbal communication that characterizes today’s social networks. He employs the spherical form of ping pong balls, using them as a modular geometric element and as a unit of measure upon which the natural selection of form operates.

Petrucci’s works reveal a fascinating and mysterious world that is not visible to the naked eye—atoms, molecules, cells, and organisms. The white spheres are arranged in his works like atoms within a crystalline structure, a tangible representation of a grain of pollen or a coral colony; the artist presents a world that can only be examined under a microscope. His works can be seen as unicellular organisms, “life forms emerging from the depths of the ocean, even before reaching the Earth”; others recall the intricate structure of a virus, with its genetic material, or the filaments of a DNA molecule.

In whatever way one chooses to interpret Cristiano Petrucci’s work, the artist proves himself a master at stimulating the viewer’s imagination.