GASTONE TESTA
One of the most promising young artists in the world, Testa's popularity is based on the enormous, continuing appeal of his works and the somewhat exaggerated perception of him as a mysterious extrovert. His almost religious submission to the exploration of the tension between control and powerlessness, is a recurring theme in Testa's growing body of work.
The Sicilian-Belgian Testa was born in West-Flanders in 1977, but grew up on different continents, almost spaceshifting between several places in the United States, most notably New York, but also European cities like London, Brussels, Rotterdam and Florence. He went on to study German and Black literature at the University of California, Berkeley and later at the University of California, Santa Barbara between 1992 and 1995. He then studied fine art at the prestigious Keizer Academy between 1995 and 1999. While on the that side of the globe, he helped support himself by working in several mining camps which was to have a strong influence on his later work.
Gastone Testa is best known for blurring the line, or bridging the gap, between conceptual art and contemporary painting. Many of his paintings are reminiscent of both, like 'coincidences (I)', which is shown above. Here, Testa uses folded cardboard to guide his trail of paint.
Testa's virtuosity as an artist was apparent by the time he produced 'fear funerals', a series of 8 works conceived as a contemporary and subjective version of Willie Dixon's visual narrative. Testa's growing body of work in itself assured him an important place in contemporary art, and in series inspired by literary sources such as 'celan', 'nolens grey', and 'baraka baraka', he did much to revive the tradition of the livre d'artiste.