Biography
Sergio Fiorentino was born in Catania in 1973.
After classical studies and attending the Academy of Fine Arts, he dedicated years to studying design and decorative arts of the 20th century. In 2011, he resumed painting, since then he has held various exhibitions in public venues and galleries. He lives and works between Noto and Catania.
A plunge into the world, as happens in the series of Divers, sinking into the blue of darkness, not the end but a new beginning. One is reminded of the magnificent work that is the Tomb of the Diver, a rare example of Greek painting from Magna Graecia dated between 480 and 740 BC, found in the area of Paestum. Sergio Fiorentino's divers, like the Hellenic work, tell of a vivacity and an expressive and narrative determination, playing between figurative realism and indefinite imagination. A journey into the afterlife or a dive into the sea of true knowledge, opposed to that "sensitive" one? Probably both, the soul purifies itself post-mortem, only to return to life in a process of reincarnation. The painterly quality, not only of this series but of all of Fiorentino's works, synthesizes a remarkable formal composition, full of humanity, pathos, and eros, managing to forever freeze the fleeting moment. A carpe diem of Horatian memory, which channels these paintings in the direction of an artistic concept of photographic expression, finding harmony with a well-known shot, The Diver of 1951, taken by Nino Migliori on the pier of Rimini. Centuries change and the diver's position is no longer horizontal but vertical, and the technique also changes, but as with Fiorentino's works, the narrative is a dive into freedom, the will to experience, to take risks, drowning our fears and trying to match the rhythm of our life with the rhythm of the world, that coveted and much fantasized perfect balance between man and the universe.
