Toni Alfano

Toni Alfano was born in Legnano (MI) in 1977. He exhibits in Italy and abroad in private galleries, fairs and public museums. Self-taught, he has always been involved in transversal research (video, music, comics) leading to pure painting and its informal deconstruction. Influenced by the phenomena of spontaneous art, he creates expressive paths in the field of palliative care and non-pharmacological therapies. In 2014, he published the graphic novel POMPEI for Neo Edizioni: an essay on the search for the self through the expressive codes of art and the creative process. In 2019, on the occasion of the 26th World Alzheimer's Day, he exhibited the monumental painting THE HIDDEN GATE at the MAGA Museum in Gallarate. His pictorial research investigates three main aspects: CREATION, with its visual dimension; CONSERVATION, in the choice of materials and the work's durability over time; DISTRUCTION, the action of time and space on the work, the transfiguration of its appearance in splinters of gestures, glances, profiles, moments recovered and proposed in a continuous Act-History. The paintings are made on cardboard covered with a thin layer of cement. A slow layering of tempera paint recreates the effect of a wall hypothetically repainted over decades. The figures are done in charcoal and bitumen glazes. The last process is Descialbo: an ancient restoration technique that literally means 'tearing away', removing the layer of paint from the plaster with a hammer, spatula or scalpel.