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Jennifer Bacon and Filippo Fossati are pleased to announce the opening of the gallery’s first solo exhibition by Italian painter Daniele Galliano on Friday, March 28, 2008
It has been a long time since Italy has produced a painter so aware of what it means to reproduce reality in painting. According to a large number of art critics who have written about his work he is considered one of the most influential painters of his generation. Daniele Galliano will present a series of paintings grouped under the title “Marziani”. In English the title can be easily translated to mean Martians, but in Italian, the word implies more then just the hypothetical and fictional inhabitant of Mars. It suggests the idea of somebody out of the ordinary for various and sometime obvious reasons such as an inhabitant from another world, in which case the word Marziani can be translated as Aliens. This new body of work presented at Esso Gallery is composed of 8 large paintings and several smaller ones made by Daniele Galliano in the last 6 months depicting such various scenes as a street demonstration of Buddhist monks, a meeting of the European parliament to African immigrants in Italy.
Daniele Galliano works in his studio as an adventurous explorer, a traveler, his art is a constant discovery. As a witness who accepts as many images as he can, he doesn’t try to explain them. Like a child who sees new things for the first time, there is no preparation in receiving visions nor in putting them on canvas (except for the basic preparation of the painter which he masters with absolute skillfulness). This doesn’t mean that he is a passive witness, in fact the histories that jump off his paintings don’t coincide with those of the real world, they are not the recording of it but become a point of view, a point of conscience. The repossession of sentiment next to reason, the strength of art as experience, becomes a discovery. The painter’s desire of solitude when making a painting sets off a series of questions, what does it mean to be set apart, to not find originality in the others, but to find it only in oneself? What does it mean to comprehend what is the profession, to analyze every single operation, every single act, to take it apart as one would do with a machine in order to know, to know oneself? Galliano has arrived at the point where the medium, painting itself, becomes the protagonist and doesn’t aim to represent anything else but itself.
Daniele Galliano was born 1961 in Pinerolo, Italy. He lives and works in Torino, Italy. His work has been exhibited internationally, including Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Roma, Italy; Palazzo Reale, Milano, Italy; Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Torino, Italy; 9th Havana Biennial, Wifredo Lam Art Center for Contemporary Arts, Cuba; Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea di Trento, Italy; Urban Planning Exhibition Center, Shanghai, China; Capital Museum, Bejing, China; Kunsthalle, Goppingen, Germany; Museo d’Arte, Nuoro, Italy; Galería Distrito Cu4tro, Madrid, Spain; Le Magasin, Grenoble, France; Livingstone Gallery, Den Haag, NI, and Artiscope, Bruxelles, Belgium. Prior to “Martians” at Esso Gallery, his work has not been shown in the US since his solo show at Annina Nosei Gallery, NY in 1997. His work is in the public collections of Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Trento, Italy; Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Torino, Italy; and the collection of Unicredit Private Banking, Milano.
esso gallery
531W 26th St, 2nd floor
New York NY, 10001
212 560 9728
http:/www.essogallery.com
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