Premio Combat Prize

A personal vision of what piqued my feelings in the first 6 weeks of residence in Beijing. Through the use of stereotypical images and universally recognizable I drew a line between decoration and human aesthetics. A pictorial decoration that takes a module of “Temple of Heaven” in Beijing, a traditional porcelain of the Ming Dynasty, a portrait of a Chinese woman by the hair color unequivocally blacks, these are the subjects that make up the new work “Made in China” . Mine is an aesthetic and a synthesis operation that uses the shape of the human face to tell the worlds, places and ways of being human. A meeting between textures and colors, which shall presume to tell a continent, China, through an aesthetic vision. Despite the modernity and progress that has subjected this nation, uses and customs, traditions and the past live in harmony with the contemporary.
Following this balance between past and future, I made use of cliches that characterize the traditional Chinese aesthetics for readapting to a more contemporary story linked to the specificity and the human ability to create beauty through decoration, painting or their own bodies. With the use of well-established technique of interweaving of paper which I work for a few years that find complete affinity to this part of the world I created this new work I have deliberately called MADE IN CHINA, because it was conceived, created in China and wants to show that China is not just the world’s factory, but also the home of special aesthetic that we often forget the existence and that we should give more space and recognition in the Western world.
Biografia Gianluca Traina:
Gianluca Traina was born in 1984 in Palermo, where he currently lives and works. He attended the art school of his hometown, where he graduated in 2002. In the same year, he moved to Florence to study Fashion Design at Polimoda. In 2004 he won a scholarship of the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana in Milano attend a specialization course in Fashion Home Design. This course enabled him to acquire the necessary knowledge that will open the doors of the fashion Empire. His work until 2008 for the most important companies in the industry, boasting important partnerships and experiences.
The failure of his expectations in the fashion industry and the lack of real opportunities for professional development led him in 2009 to return to his hometown and attend a course in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Palermo.
Since 2009 in parallel with the study begins to develop interests and projects, that would soon lead him to live an extraordinary popularity and rapid and intended career in the art world. His research is focused in painting and sculpture, overlapping unusual and contemporary materials such as PVC and paper, through which develops forms, signs and places taken from a personal memory and the suggestions from different cultures and historical periods typical of his Mediterranean identity.
In 2012 developed an innovative system for creating three-dimensional shapes through the use of two-dimensional surfaces such as paper, this system will allow him to create his own project called PORTRAIT 360 °, a series of portraits of people through the synthesis between image digital and craftsmanship will make him obtain a great success in 96 countries of the world. It ‘so clamorous his success in a few weeks captures the attention of the web and many design, fashion and communication magazines that identifies the innovative and futuristic value enough to suggest the project portrait 360 ° as a trend to be followed for the design of new products. In December 2012 Gianluca Traina exhibited for the first time Portrait 360 ° in Miami during the Art Basel with ROBERT FONTAINE GALLERY at the art fair SCOPE. Since then he established a partnership with this American gallery that continues today and that allows him to be present, year after year, in the most important art fairs in America. With Robert Fontaine Gallery Gianluca Traina exhibited his Portrait 360 in group exhibitions, and part of its production it is represented by this gallery.
In 2013, Gianluca Traina participates in the Tokyo Designers Week, exhibiting the work UnPortrait in the section THE YOUNG ASIA, together with the exhibition of his work won first prize as best designer of 2013. In 2014, Unportrait will be exhibited in Milan during the Salone Del Mobile in Japanese pavilion with the association of Japanese design.
In 2014 he participates in Americans ArtPrize , his work “Low & HIGH” has an incredible success, its production was noticed by a major American company that manufactures sunglasses and eyeglasses, the MARCHON that selects for artistic committee. With Marchon produces a work with the industrial wastes in production of glasses and that will represent the company in a sustainable project that will allow him to exhibit the work in the world between 2015 and 2016.
In 2015, his work “Watch Me” is selected to be exhibited during the EXPO MILANO 2015 at Fabrica Del Vapore in the group exhibition MILANO CITY OF THE WORLD. In the same year, the artist received the proposal to be represented in China, Hong Kong and Singapore by the platform ASIA CONTEMPORARY ART BUYER. Asia seems to be a familiar place for the artist, territories that with time he learned about and from which is inspired by the hand skills in manufacturing objects and place of the heart that promptly used to search for new languages.
In 2015 he participates again to Artprize with ”Sensi” work and reached the final. resulting in one of the most loved works during the competition. In January 2016, after a special commission from the company Kidrobots exposes a custom toy in the New York gallery of Clutter Magazine. In February he won the prize Limen Arte, as best international artist. Recently the website widewalls.ch named him among the 10 best Italian artists to know and follow. At the beginning of 2017, he established a new contract with the Luz Botero gallery in Panama, representing him in South America. His artistic activity will continue in 2017 in Beijing, China, in a guest artist residency for a few months to realize the project ”Peoples of Beijing”.
His artistic research and the attention with which the artist produces his works allow him to develop pathways that hybridize between the sectors of the art, fashion and design. His work is always trying to create a human relationship between the viewer and the art object, the report with which the artist develops unusual paths of perception that take advantage of the modernity of digital imaging and analog fruition of the vision artwork. The modernity of this process make his artistic research unique and unrepeatable, contemporary and futuristic.