FERNANDO GARBELLOTTO - Biography
Fernando Garbellotto was born in 1955 in Portogruaro. After studying humanities and obtaining his degree in law, in the early eighties Garbellotto "embarked on an intense and systematic reflection on the reasons of painting" (Flaminio Gualdoni). His first cycle of paintings called Emergenze belongs to this period. The second half of the eighties saw his treatment of the surface become non-pictorial, merging into a kind of geometrics where light changes from something physical into the metaphysical. This second series is called Sospensioni.
Towards the end of the 1980s, fascinated by the latest theories of Benoit Mandelbrot on chaos and fractals, Garbellotto devoted himself to new iconographic experiments and mapped out another field of research ongoing to this day, that of Fractals.
He began to exhibit in the early 1990s and had shows in private galleries in Pordenone, Venice, Portogruaro, and Perugia.
In 1994 he was awarded the “Città di Cesenatico” prize and was invited to exhibit at the local Palazzo Comunale.
In ’94 and ’97 he was invited by the town council of S. Vito al Tagliamento to take part in the exibition Hic et nunc with a solo show at the Torre Scaramuccia; he exhibited at the Galleria Meeting di Mestre, the Galleria Sintesi di Treviso where he presented his installation Il grande frattale, and had two solo shows at the Studio Delise, Portogruaro.
In 1997 he founded in Milan, together with eight other artists, the Caos Italiano movement.
An important catalogue was published, edited by Vincenzo Perna, and the movement organised three shows in private galleries in Milan. He was invited to exhibit in numerous public spaces, among which the Majorana high school in Rome.
In 1999 Caos Italiano was invited to take part in the show Arte e Scienza at the Torvergata university in Roma and at the Biennale di Locri. In the same year he exhibited with the movement at the Novosibirsk state museum, which acquired two works by him. He took part in numerous shows in the following years.
In 2005 Edizioni del Cavallino published a monograph Frenando Garbellotto, opere dal 1984 al 2005, edited by Paolo Cardazzo and with an essay by Flaminio Gualdoni; and in the following year, with a catalogue edited by Toni Toniato, he exhibited at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Naples.
In 2006 he developed what he himself has defined as the summing up of his previous twenty years’ art: the Reti Frattali.
He took part in solo and group shows at the Studio Delise, Portogruaro, the Centro Culturale Liba, Pontedera, the Arte Festival del Comune di Faleria, the Centro Culturale Aldo Moro di Cordenons, the Accademia di Belle Arti di Ripetta, Rome, the Galleria Comunale ai Molini di Portogruaro (presented by Claudio Cerritelli), Spazio Thetis at the Venice Arsenale, the Galleria Anti, Mestre, the Museo Civico, Albona, Croatia, and at the Fondazione Antonio Calderara, Vacciago.
In 2009 he was invited by the Ameno town council to hold an anthological solo show Frattali, 1990/2009 in the fascinating rooms of Palazzo Tornielli.
Later on, with the support of the Veneto regional council and the Treviso provincial council, the town of Cappella Maggiore devoted to him the show Da Garbellotto a Soldera, forme d’arte nella rete del tempo-tappe a ritroso, curated by Duilio Del Fabbro and installed in the town’s exhibition rooms.
In 2009 he also began to make videos and video installations; his first performance, Fractal Net Thinking-Sliding Venice, was presented at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, and his video performance was projected from the terrace of Ca’ Venier onto the facade of Ca’ Corner in front, and it delineated a succession of nets that, from the waters of the Grand Canal, climbed over the building’s natural screen of 900 square metres.
In 2011 he was to be seen in the Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale with his video installation Fractal Net Singing, made under the direction of Giancarlo Marinelli and with a sound track by the singer Elisa and Prof. Renato Miani. The video was also seen in September of the same year at the Venice Film Festival.
In these years he also undertook the activity of stage designer for his writer and director friend Giancarlo Marinelli, and was responsible for the scenery of D’Annunzio’s L’innocente, with Ivana Monti.
Again in 2011 he was invited to take part in the important show TRA-Edge of Becoming, curated by Axel Vervoordt, Rosa Martinez, Daniela Ferretti, and Francesco Poli at Palazzo Fortuny, Venice, and to exhibit in the Tibetan Pavilion at Ca’ Zanardi, Venice.
In 2012 he held an important anthological exhibition at Palazzo Crepadona, Belluno, a show that followed this Venetian artist’s career from 1969 until the present. For the occasion there was presented a catalogue with essays by Andrea Bruciati, Giovanni Granzotto, and Lorena Gava.
In April 2012, for Studio Lombardini22, Milan, he created the site-specific installation Mare Bianco: il Mediterraneo visto da Sud and, in October, he was the guest of the IKONA Gallery, Venice, with his project FNT – WHO?. He rounded off the year in Istanbul with his show Meet Me in the Clouds, curated by Giorgio Caione, at the Pasajist Indipendent Art Space.
The following year he created a large-scale installation of fractal nets on the fascinating patio of the Galleria il Segno’s building in Mantua.
In 2014 in London, together with the teachers and pupils of the prestigious MET School of London, he made his latest video Fractal Net Dancing.
In Palazzo Sarcinelli, Conegliano, in 2017 he was to be seen, together with Emilio Cavallini, in the show Quando la tela diventa opera, curated by Lorena Gava and Duilio Dal Fabbro.
In 2018 Spazio Eventi Orler devoted a large retrospective show to him and, towards the end of the year, he presented at the Galleria TAG, Lugarno, the show Frattali in Rete. In 2019 he exhibited at the Casa Robegan, inside the Musei Civici, Treviso, in the show Lo Spazio come Condizione - Mario Deluigi - Fernando Garbellotto, curated by Duilio Dal Fabbro.