Atlantide - Pantónio solo show
/Bombordo - 2017
«ATLANTIDE» PANTÓNIO SOLO SHOW / ITINERRANCE
24bis Boulevard du Général Jean Simon 75013 PARIS
September 22nd - October 28th 2017
Open Tuesday to Saturday 12am - 7pm
“Atlantide” is Pantónio’s second solo show. Three years after his last exhibition, he is presenting new paintings at Galerie Itinerrance.
The title “Atlantide” is a tribute to the myth of Atlantis. Pantónio uses the story of this submerged island to better invite his spectators to enter his imaginative world : a paradisiac island now sunk into the ocean. The mythical character of this title emphasis the poetic and fabulous dimension of his paintings. The reference to Atlantis is also a way to synthesize in one fictional place all the trips that the artist took all over the world in the last years. As a matter of fact, Pantónio spent the last years travelling the world to paint huge murals. This experience greatly influenced his work on canvas. Invited in more than ten countries, he painted his bestiary over many continents. His murals representing moving animals are visible in Portugal, France, Italia, Ukraine, Poland, Tunisia, Maroc, Brazil, Canada or in the USA.
Pantónio’s murals are always influenced by their direct environment and the local people he meets there.
Therefore, each wall is anchored in its context. The animals that Pantónio represent on walls, from a country to another, describe in a poetic way the human interactions that the artist witnessed. Each murals can be seen as a fable that narrates a personal experience or the artist’s vision on our society. “Atlantide” is an exhibition that Pantónio created using his experience painting walls and adapting it to the context of the gallery. The birds, the fishes and the rabbits spread out on the canvas to tell us modern and social fables. The artist tries to fetch in his spectators feelings that they experienced during their childhood. His new paintings combine his unique touch, his flowing lines and a reduced color palette in dense and moving compositions.
About the artist
Antonio Correia aka Pantónio was born on Terceira island in the Azores archipelago in 1975. He lives and work in Portugal, where he started his artistic training. As a teenager, he attended sculpture, modeling, drawing and painting classes at the Azores Cultural Institute. Then he studied at Escola Profissional de Ofícios Artísticos in Cerveira, before pursuing his training in art at the Polytechnic Institute of Tomar. As a young artist, he decided to use the street as a place to express himself and develop his art. His paintings usually represent animal creatures : birds, fishes, rabbits, horses, etc. His style is immediately recognizable because of the multitude of luminous lines he uses to translate volumes covering dark silhouettes. The soft and fluid shapes, always in movement, transform his paintings in a urban dance. Pantónio’s artistic practice is above all contextual. Before painting a wall, he impregnates himself with the surrounding environment, he meets with the local people and tries to absorb the general atmosphere. This interaction with the space gives him the tone for his mural. The moving animals, physically connected to each other translate the human interaction that Pantonio experienced.
