Beyond Painting
                                     a surreal life in the art

A new important art catalog on the artistic world of Trevisan - 300 color pages - 2020

"Art must not imitate the world, but reveal it”  Hegel

Trevisan's painting starts immediately in a surreal key. And to this vision he remains faithful in these 30 years of artistic work, slowly and step by step pursuing his artistic vision of life. Chagall and Magritte are undoubtedly from the beginning masters of reference, with their dreamlike and dreamlike vision. Color and positivity, love and poetry immediately accompany the artistic creations developing a personal technique representative of a surreal vision of life. Trevisan comes from long years of photographic works that have helped him in shots and proportions of subjects and objects, treating everything as a scene composition where everything finds balance and harmony. We must not forget his technical and scientific training, which we certainly find in the installation of each pictorial work; in each painting it is easy to find a structure with foundations on which the work is developed. Symmetry and balance help both in the phase of implementation of the painting and in a second moment when the finished work remains in the pivotal time of Trevisan's art.

The painter creates in his mind the image of an idea and the key to representation is immediate. There is no hesitation in front of the white canvas, in fact there is the frenzy and the urgency to give life with color to those images that had come to life in the mind. The thought is so much in motion that everything is composed as in a magic number in which the wonder and surprise of a new play of colors and shapes that give substance to the idea comes to life from the top hat. And his brush is a magic wand that flows back and forth in a harmony of form and color. It is the metamorphosis of thought as an image in the mind to something concrete and real. The fantastic composition comes to life and is accompanied in the creative thinking of something unique and magical. The palette is full of light and matches the romantic thought of the harmony of life. We play with the smile and wonder and pass on a positive critical sense of life and existence.

Yet often his pictorial language, which appears immediate and full of awareness, can conceal something deeper to read between shades and colors. The combinations and the deviations between objects / subjects are never casual and incidental, but the result of research of symptomatic combinations that in the unions manage to lead to the metamorphosis of a deep thought, which is positioned in a mechanism of thoughts and reasoning that lead to observer to new emotions and senses and thoughts. If there are sometimes associations of ideas, these involve the creation of an atmosphere in which thoughts come to life that help us translate the present of life into a new key, which stimulates and feeds itself into emotions of the present.

There is naturally no superiority in an artistic language, rather it wants to be humble viaticum but determined to lead us to the vision of the work in a personal and self-critical sense. Subjectivity that is stimulated and helped to find its sensory and emotional path, characterized by the personal potential of each individual. The work then remains only a temporal and physical instrument of this metamorphosis of sensations, in a unique and subjective symbiosis between it and the observer. The figurative but surreal pictorial language does not remain superior but accompanies the individual, in a game of roles in which one is involved and actors in first person. This is why a work by Trevisan often captures us from the first moment. It is like a spell of reality that captivates and involves us in a fraction of time with its immediate language, but which then takes us by the hand and unconsciously captures us in our own thoughts, emotions, memories, personal flashbacks. It is easy to capture the attention of those observing a pictorial work by Trevisan for the first time, but it is difficult to convey the interest in the intricacies of the emotional imagination stimulating what Freud called "the game of captive clouds", the illusion of to be free on a personal journey, but which instead is guided in the forced metamorphosis of the unconscious.

The representation is and remains surreal, even if a poetic perception accompanies each work in each subject / object. Naturally there is a figurative representation of the individual subjects / objects, but in their union or contrast, in their entirety and association we tend to the oneiric exhorting to different emotional conclusions.
Trevisan's painting invites us at first to observe and then in an immediate temporal game to the involvement of our ego, in a personal recognition of our emotional experience, in a register of our consciousness capable of opening those drawers created in the past and only reopened in the stimulus of colors and atmospheres. In the pictorial space of a canvas, Trevisan extends his hand to us and leads us not into his creative world but into our personal identity which he stimulates.
For Trevisan painting is a fundamental communication tool in which the image takes its peculiarity of emotional message with its primitive representation.

The subject / object carries with it a commitment not so much in abstracting associations of ideas and distant messages, but the immediacy of a real world that helps to reach the nuances of living true experiences.
The pictorial context is always a clean and uniform background in which subjects / objects find their place in a balanced and often symmetrical frame / frame. The details are always outlined to the reality to have an experience of the surreal in the real, so that the sensitivity is easily accompanied in the personal and emotional imagination. Reality is imitated to arrive at the mimesis of the surreal, more easily conducive to finding free rein to the creation of personal sensations. We always want to attract the attention of the look and in the detail and in the whole of the work, to get out of the dimension of the painting and find in the depth of the canvas a free space in which to be able to travel and free oneself without constraints.
In front of a painting by Trevisan, knowledge and wisdom is not necessary. Artistic and cultural preparation is not essential, but the simple vision of the reality that is transformed in each individual in the development of his baggage of life, freeing him in a sensory experience. Look to stimulate your personal abilities in being carried away by your emotions and feelings to something real and real. Painting becomes an instrument of every man's present, a present that is enriched and develops into a novelty of sensations and perceptions.

Trevisan's painting unconsciously becomes reflection and meditation in a complacency and involvement between image and observer in a personal interconnection experience. What is observed is not the subject / object but the projection of one's own experience and knowledge which at that moment finds its mental and sensorial opening, always subjective and emotional. The subject / object is not as a figurative representation, but it is only an instrument of an experience that from visual becomes simultaneously interior and emotional. Vision, emotion and experience merge in a temporal fraction and without realizing it we live ourselves the representation that we have before us, in the projection of our being. The pictorial image becomes reflection on the representation, and therefore from tool becomes thought and emotion.
Painting is the creation of an imitative reality that becomes the mouthpiece of the real when already in front of it we agree with our thinking about our emotional personality. We immediately become active before the work, perhaps unconsciously, but certainly actors in our thinking of an experience that is enclosed between us and the work. You play with images to develop a philosophy of reality, making that first immediate initial mystery of a transformation into a personal and emotional projection.
The image becomes thought, the color becomes sensation, the pictorial surface becomes freedom of the soul.

Trevisan represents his personal universe, but once the painting is finished this dimension becomes universal and usable by anyone. From a surface of color and form comes the wonder and gratuitousness that Trevisan leaves us as a legacy. This is the richness of his painting: giving his surreal to the reality of the world, of life, to every man who must not decipher, but only breathe this universe that becomes true and stimulating.
His optimistic and providential key undoubtedly helps the free development of themes of hope and growth, of light and openness, of intangible wealth and well-being, in the serenity of open and undefined horizons. In his canvases we see the freedom of life, both in its potential and in its regenerative and fundamental expectations. There are no limits or boundaries, no walls and trenches, each individual is capable and can find endless open ways to reach his personal natural dimension, and of peace and harmony.

From a pictorial exercise we arrive at the creation of a dialectical and interior language, on which the perception of reality is based, captured in its emotional and psychological nuances. Only in this way can a pictorial work find its concreteness and functionality.
Objects / subjects are often foreign to each other. Particularly when an animal is associated with a distant object in its context of time and space. Yet the image that is composed in the representative meeting of objects in antithesis leads to the creation of a new order that is so random, but in accord with a mystery that does not upset but conquers and captivates in a harmony of the senses. It is a mystery that accompanies the observer in a smile to life, a mystery capable of leaving an invisible trace in us, a mystery that becomes spirit and lives in reality, transporting our breath in surreal dimensions. Conscience is enriched with new visions, which may remain to settle and only later re-emerge free and strong, rescuers and protectors to our being. And even if the image does not remain faithful to our understanding, it will stimulate the conscience, emancipating it in a potential emotional growth. It is this pictorial poetics that remains the denominator of Trevisan's work. A poetic that exalts living and the universe, which legitimizes his search for stimuli in a universal and timeless language. It is not always easy to arrive at this, but method and passion make his pictorial activity a springboard of dialectic and mantic will.

Painting means being part of a logic of consciousness that comes from the image to the foundations of life.
But what is the meaning of Trevisan's artworks?
Painting is and remains for Trevisan only a tool to express ideas and thoughts that arise in his mind. He does not want to reveal anything, let alone explain mysteries of life and the unconscious. He doesn't even take us by the hand, rather he immediately leaves us free and alone in the fruition of the work, free to direct our inner gaze towards inner desires and personal references. He is neither a teacher nor a guide, but a simple storyteller of the soul who tries to make us dream and fly in our emotions and dreams.
In his pictorial works there is no symbolism, what appears is.
The paintings are only instruments to arouse in the observer his feelings, but they do not want and cannot directly express a feeling.
There may be irony in pictorial works, a subtle positive and light spirit, but what they want to express is certainly not laughter or fun, only positivity and that critical sense of life that leads to accepting everything concretely.

They do not explain anything and reveal nothing, but they accompany personal evaluations. His painting does not express allegories or symbols. It is true that the objects / subjects are portrayed in a surreal atmosphere, but this is to stimulate sensations not to express them. The objects / subjects that are represented are always figurative elements, but that their association, their whole can be false and without appearances of the tangible.
Objects / subjects are often foreign to each other. Particularly when an animal is associated with a distant object in its context of time and space. Yet the image that is composed in the representative encounter of objects in antithesis leads to the creation of a new order so casual but in accord with a mystery that does not upset but conquers and captivates in a harmony of the senses. And we often experience a wonder of his work, certainly not bewilderment and disorientation, because we can immediately connect with this new dimension and be personally involved in that new atmosphere.

Trevisan plays and rejoices in painting and giving life to an association of objects / subjects / animals. If the object taken individually can be simple and banal, this no longer happens if we associate it with another element and from this combination something unique, new is born.
The painting is almost always born from a sudden idea left with two accidental sketches in pen on any sheet of paper found on hand.
As the work takes shape, it is Trevisan himself who marvels at what is slowly being elaborated from the initial idea to the harmony of shapes and colors, a reality that comes to life from something that did not exist before. For this reason there is wonder and amazement, even before putting his signature to say that everything is finished. But is it really all completed? No. Trevisan's pictorial works are born quickly and quickly take their way.
Then there is Trevisan's creative fun in the composition of the work by transforming objects or animals or placing them in spaces without gravity. It makes everything fly and everything knows how to fly, in fact if we want to let something float better we connect it to colored balloons or to hot air balloons. Everything appears light, without gravity, in the lightness of the visions between real and unreal, between dream "or am I awake?".

The title remains during the non-existent execution and therefore not decisive in the preparation and elaboration of the work. The titles in fact are not clarifying. It is the idea as a whole that determines the birth of a work, the title comes only later, in fact often the title is just a game to displace and even more to the observer, composing sentences that often have no value with the subjects / objects represented. And on the other hand, we can understand that sometimes it is only a stimulus to get closer to the work. Or sometimes the title remains only the pretext of a cataloging and distinction in its vast pictorial production. (june 2020)