These are not simple paintings. They propose known or knowable subjects, but they buzz with painting-decisions which tentatively and generously coalesce into images. In fact all the time wonderful fluctuations happen in small areas where contours dissolve, or decorative motifs attain a kind of object-ness, or colour-spaces envelop the edges of tables or bodies.

Elegant flicking marks which propose wallpaper bouquets, transition to soft, smooth colour bands. All of the shifts and changes are present and readable (to be enjoyed), but are not show-y. The most considered of all is the white paint areas. Being entirely empty (of colour, description, space) and completely full (of light and an awareness of surface) the white areas are able to be everything in between those poles all at once. And Alessandro’s protracted attention to how the white is built-up allows for a navigation and negotiation of painting (as an action), with paint (as matter) to consider the thresholds and anticipations of adolescence, marriage or simply dressing to go out for an evening. Just as white painting is important, so too is it’s opposite, pattern. The specialness (‘luxury’ seems both the right and the wrong word) of (a) painting (noun) is echoed in the specificity of the choice of t-shirt or wallpaper; how they present delights to be echoed in paint. But the patterns’ robustness also becomes its vulnerability. These paintings understand vanitas. They delight in the moment and they exist in state of infinite slowness, of incremental unfolding.