Ernesto Morales' clouds on display in Milan.

Area35 art gallery in Milan is hosting, until December 8, the exhibition Studies of Clouds, a solo show by Ernesto Morales (Montevideo, 1974) focused on an in-depth study of the themes of transformation and metamorphosis. After the important exhibitions held at the Lena & Roselli Gallery in Budapest, the O+O Gallery in Valencia and as part of PARMA 360 Festival of Contemporary Creativity in Parma, the Uruguayan artist’s solo show, which expresses itself with a figurative and symbol-laden painting matrix, places the emphasis on the mutability of clouds, as a symbol of all that is unstable, an emblem of metamorphosis and change. By their very nature, clouds are ambivalent, tending to encompass supposed opposites. They conceal and reveal, they are immaterial, insubstantial and evanescent, they can assume any form and, at the same time, embody none, an emblem of the impermanence of things and the incessant becoming of time.

The clouds are accompanied by a number of works that represent another theme dear to Morales: that of the forest, often identified with the forest, a seductive and primeval symbolic place, as opposed to the built and civilized city. A space that, like clouds, is steeped in contradictions: a dreamlike place, the home of unconscious thought, precluded from sunlight, studded with allegories and initiatory symbols, the matrix from which clouds originate with their changing and metamorphic characteristics.

As in the case of English artist John Constable’s Studies of Clouds, so Ernesto Morales composed real studies of clouds during his many travels around the world - in New York, Singapore, Buenos Aires, Bangkok, Rome, Florence - with the aim of recreating a kind of cosmic mapping of the skies. The source of inspiration for these sketches, which originated in the early 2000s and constitute an encyclopedic project in the making, is a systematic look not only at the representation of the infinite forms and consistencies of clouds but also at the ontology of painting-making. It is a pictorial exercise that proceeds through a series of thematic variations, an experimentation whose profound reasons derive naturally from painting itself.

“Morales’ painting chooses as its field of research color, the most irrational, indefinable and unstable side of the work of art, but also the freest and most open to change. The clouds exhibited in the gallery are accompanied by two equally symbolic colors that connote the space of the horizon: gold, which generally corresponds to the mystical aspect of the sun and celestial phenomena in general; silver, which corresponds to that of the moon and infinite planetary surfaces. Both gold and silver express two opposite but complementary elements that act on the emotional component of our vision, refining sensitivity and instilling balance through a process of introspection”(Chiara Canali).

Argentine artist Ernesto Morales was born in 1974 in Montevideo, Uruguay. He began his artistic career in Buenos Aires, where he lived until 2006 when he moved to Europe. After an initial period in Paris he established his studio in Italy, first in Rome, and since 2011 in Turin. His international artistic career has led him to exhibitions in Museums, Galleries and Art Fairs in different countries, including the United States, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Hungary, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Uruguay.

Between 2009 and 2012 he institutionally represents the Governments of Italy, Argentina and Uruguay with a series of important solo exhibitions held in different Italian and Argentine Museums. Since 2013 he has periodically held exhibitions in the United States and Southeast Asia. In 2014 he holds a series of important exhibitions in Singapore, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur, and in 2015 a major solo exhibition in New York in the rooms of the Consulate General of the Argentine Republic.

Different monographic volumes dedicated to his work are edited including “Il Tempo della Distanza” (Genoa, 2010), “The invisible bridges” (Singapore, 2014), “Il giorno come la notte” (Turin, 2015), “Distance” (Milan, 2016), “Aurum” (Milan, 2017).
Education: After an intense training period spent in Buenos Aires, in 1999 he obtained the title of Professor of Painting and in 2005 the Doctorate in Visual Arts at theUniversidad de Bellas Artes. From 1999 to 2006 he taught Painting and Latin American Art History at theUniversidad de Buenos Aires, and served as Director of theAcademia de Bellas Artes de Buenos Aires.
Recent collaborations include the representation of the famous text “The Aleph” by Jorge Luis Borges with a cycle of 33 pictorial plates collected in a book that will soon be published by Barometz, a publishing house in Naples.

For all information you can visit the official website of Area35 art gallery.

Pictured: Ernesto Morales, Clouds (2018; oil on canvas, 100 x 150 cm)

Ernesto Morales' clouds on display in Milan.

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