Herald St has announced its representation of Amedeo Polazzo (b.1988, Starnberg, Germany; lives and works in London). Polazzo creates works on canvas, murals using the fresco secco technique, and functional, hand-painted lamp sculptures that draw on a wide range of visual references, from Italian Renaissance painting, trompe l’œil illusionism, and Surrealism, to popular culture, literature, and everyday observation. Abstracting elements of personal biography into broader allegories, his works suggest psychological states, or encounters that remain deliberately unresolved.
Across each medium, the motifs Polazzo paints resemble objects glimpsed in a dream, or fragments of some half-forgotten memory. Humming with latent meaning, but refusing to offer up a linear narrative, these images invite reflection on our seemingly ever-forward journey through time. Polazzo arrives at his finished canvases through a process of gradually building up and erasing layers of pigment, tempera, and oil, suggesting that what is lost during the making of a work is as significant as what ultimately remains.
Writing on Polazzo’s current solo exhibition, Commedia dell’arte, at Herald St | Bologna, the editors of ARTnews Italia observed:
‘The inexorability of time and the ephemeral nature of existence are central themes in Polazzo’s work… Polazzo’s still lifes possess a life of their own; they represent psychological states and become characters in stories that are not ours. The artist turns into a director, constructing strange, at times unsettling narrative structures. Like masks in the manner of James Ensor, Polazzo’s artistic operations contain a bitterly ironic streak that naturally gives way to unease.’
About the artist
Amedeo Polazzo is a contemporary artist whose practice explores the relationship between abstraction, materiality and perception. Working across painting and mixed media, Polazzo creates compositions that balance gesture, structure and atmosphere, using layered surfaces and carefully considered colour to evoke emotional and psychological spaces rather than literal representation. His work is characterised by a sensitivity to texture and process, with each painting developing through the gradual accumulation, removal and reworking of materials.
Drawing on both modernist abstraction and contemporary painting, Polazzo’s practice investigates how colour, form and surface can communicate experience beyond narrative. His compositions often shift between moments of clarity and ambiguity, encouraging viewers to engage slowly with the physical qualities of the work and the subtle tensions between movement and stillness. Rather than depicting specific places or events, his paintings function as open visual fields that invite personal interpretation.
Through an intuitive approach to making, Polazzo allows chance and experimentation to play an important role in the development of each work. Layers of paint, marks and textures are built up over time, creating richly nuanced surfaces that reveal the history of their own making. This emphasis on process gives the work a quiet intensity, where material itself becomes a vehicle for memory, sensation and reflection.
Polazzo has exhibited internationally, developing a practice that contributes to contemporary conversations around abstraction and the continuing possibilities of painting. His work demonstrates how abstraction can remain a vital and expressive language, offering contemplative spaces that reward sustained looking and invite viewers to experience painting as both a physical object and an emotional encounter. @amedeopolazzo
