For almost twenty years Fausto Bertasa has been studying the linguistic, visual and gestural signs of our age. As a profound expert on America Pop Art, from this area of enquiry he has learned to decode the mechanisms of mass communication. He analyses, selects, enlarges bar codes, displays, keyboards – typical symbols of post-industrial society, a visual code of modernity, of cable communications, the new literacy of our times. The artist uses different materials and media – from painting to photography, video to drawing, neon to installation – to reflect on the codes and means of communication: the world of the media (international dailies), verbal communication (from phone cards to the rediscovered verbalisation of text messaging), the world of the Internet (keyboards and mouse pads), the alternative paths of the communication of fair trade. In his works, Bertasa records pages from newspapers, events, microstories and digital literacy, in which logos and the symbols of the alphabet of our era are reproduced, overlaid, blended and rewritten to create a new system of signs and poetry. By creating multiple cultural assonances and reinterpreting signs, stimuli and images, Bertasa’s visual discourse is a rebus that arouses the observer’s irresistible urge to decipher and, in turn, devise his own creative defensive strategies to stem the deluge of information of contemporary society.

Fausto Bertasa (Bergamo, Italy, 1953)