Marco Bizzarri: The Temple Still Stands

Marco Bizzarri’s paintings grapple with the intricate realms of memory, remembrance and commemoration. Hailing from Chile and currently residing in England, the artist’s practice is deeply rooted in geography and the found objects that come to define a place. Bizzarri’s paintings embrace his surrounding landscapes and make visible the fleeting aspects of his autobiography. In his endeavour to preserve the memory’s ephemeral images, he skillfully weaves together disparate spaces, times, and figures within a single composition. As a result, these works become conduits, unearthing extraordinary events from the artist’s life whilst retaining a visceral strangeness, akin to the enigmatic nature of memory itself.

The Temple Still Stands showcases Bizzarri’s unique handling of paint. His scrupulous attention to materiality and pictorial technique is evidenced by his process of sandblasting the canvas’ surface as he conceals and reveals his subjects. Equally guided by the interplay of light, both as a material and compositional tool, Bizzarri’s techniques engender a dual movement within his works, wherein memories are simultaneously veiled and unveiled. Consequently, the works evoke a palpable sense of time overlapping, where representations of the past present and future coexist within memory, perception, and imagination.

Bizzari’s paintings are transformative vehicles, deftly carrying viewers across temporal and spatial dimensions. The resulting works serve as potent testimonies to the resonance of the past within the present, as well as the objects that vibrate with the echoes of memory. Bizzarri’s captivating paintings, realised with his unique and nuanced techniques, transcend the boundaries of time and invite contemplation of the profound significance of what we remember, what we forget, and the enduring reverberations of the past in the present.