/ Bartolomeo Migliore

Bartolomeo Migliore (1960) is a well-established Italian artist living and working in Turin. In 1994, he had his first solo shows in Belgium and Austria. Since then, beyond the confines of Turin and Milan, his artistic growth has led him to exhibit in Switzerland, Germany, Spain, and the USA. He belongs to the triad of famous local artists – Daniele Galliano (1961) and Pierluigi Pusole (1963) – who became prominent in the 1990s in the new Italian art scene. The group often exhibit together, like the recent show at the Davide Paludetto (Arte Contemporanea, Turin • 2020). Among a long list of collective shows, he also participated in three exhibitions held at the gallery Kspaces in Turin and curated by the American-Italian artist Victor Kastelic (1964): The Greatest Things/Le cose migliori (2018), Black and White Nights (2018) and Foreshadows/Prefigurazioni (2019).

His artistic practice is especially renowned for blurring boundaries between fine art and graphic design, as seen in his experimental typographical journeys on canvas and paper. Migliore is the Neville Brody or David Carson of Italy, a socially engaged artist who, inspired by the Punk music of the late 1970s/early1980s during his artistic formation, thought that the use of graphics provided more possibilities in his exploration of visual communication. His final pieces of art are his load of life material. In his processes, he first de-constructs his material from different sources in a humorous, emotional, sceptical and ironical way in the form of various cut-out fragments. The fragments are then re-constructed in mixed media as collage (“cut-and-paste”) to create new stories. Seemingly referencing graffiti art, he confronts contemporary youth language through canvases, in which he uses the power of words and images beating to the fragmented rhythm of the music. In his 16-piece polyptych Bad Beat (2022), he never seems to want to grow up. He carries on being playful, as if he was in a betting shop, in arranging his fragments in compositions keeping the tradition of Ray Gun magazine (1992–2000) alive while continuing to be rebellious in his approach to pushing boundaries on distortions and breaking the rules on typography. With Miglore, Punks Not Dead.

Looking closely through the lettering, under the tags and phrasing, one will see the scientific spelling-out of how to win or lose money. A Bookmaker’s “board”. Printout after printout abandoned on the betting agency’s floor. Who scores big will keep the sheet; who takes the beat will drop it. Bartolomeo’s bad beat sheets supply the nervous impetus of lettering and numbers that kindles the artist's graffiti and branding… a practice that began long ago during his guitar-pounding, album cutting, early 80s Punk phase. After 40 years, Bartolomeo has highly refined his graphism without losing its primitive lure. LP, 45s or CD circles and fragmented phrasing: lettered and littered, scratched and scribbled, erased and restarted… lost protests, forgotten band names and advertising. The Sucker’s bad luck documents have been sealed forever in plastic after the artist’s transformation. Start over time capsules.
– Bartolomeo Migliore, Bad Beat/Kspaces Archive, Turin (2022)