IF I

Technique: Stainless steel, oil.
Size: 70 × 55 cm.

Oil on stainless steel – the technique associated with the name of Valerio Carrubba (b. 1975). The artist lays down an image and then repeats it precisely in a second layer, erasing the traces of the brush to reach an even, almost mechanical surface. The terse palindromic title "IF I" (which reads the same in both directions) is typical of the artist and underscores an interest less in the subject than in the very mechanism of a painting's making. The work belongs to his corporeal, hyperreal imagery of the late 2000s.