Seb Patane

“Violenza D’Avanguardia” (Violence of the Avant-Garde), the title of Seb Patane’s first solo show in Italy, refers to a phrase coined by the founders of Lotta Continua, the far-left political movement that emerged in Italy in the 1970s. References to such sensational events and moments are only one point on the path that connects this artist, now a resident of London, to the country of his birth. Patane extracts photographs from period newspapers and chooses nineteenth-century prints, to which he applies graphic flourishes. As a result, the selected images become vehicles for fresh meanings, as if he were pointing the emotional power of history in new directions. One work shows an enlargement of a newspaper photo of the January 16, 1968, arrest of Luigi Bobbio, one of the founders of Lotta Continua. Patane’s intervention: obscuring Bobbio’s eyes with a simple black strip, in a classic censorship gesture. The act is minimal but surprising.

Read the full report on artforum.com here.

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