The present according to Daniele Galliano on display in Pietrasanta

The Giovanni Bonelli Gallery in Pietrasanta presents for the first time in its spaces the solo exhibition of Daniele Galliano (Pinerolo, 1961). Curated by Alessandro Romanini, the exhibition has its own key in its title: Right Now, which is also the title of one of the large paintings on display. The present locked in an absolute instant is reminiscent of Cartier-Bresson’s Lost Moment, without any estheticizing pretensions, but it is also a statement of intent about the kind of observation that Galliano has been pursuing in his work for decades. With his self-taught anthropologist’s eye, the artist stands at the margins of the flow of events and records, camera in hand, attitudes, expressions, poses of a humanity that is both individual and crowd (understood as a set of singularities sharing a collective ritual and not as an indistinct mass). The result, visible in its different declinations in the canvases in the exhibition, consists of moments reworked through a deceptively rapid painting with decisive brushstrokes that tends to fade into the abstract by approaching the work while recovering all the fullness of a real and incredibly penetrating gaze by moving away from it. In the larger works the figures seem almost cut out, as in a collage, and then juxtaposed on the canvas so strong is Galliano’s desire to characterize the individual attitudes that are so personal and yet, for that very reason, universal.

In the work Right Now, for example, the mountain rising in the background, with just a few remnants of white snow, seems to carry within itself an echo of the events of recent months, yet the sky so blue (of a blue that characterizes all of Galliano’s work) pacifies the vision by inviting the viewer to dwell on the details: on the man in a T-shirt and tennis shoes who turns his back to the mountain and gazes absorbedly at his cell phone (a visual metaphor for our attitude toward nature), on the characters walking toward the left side of the painting, as if they were strolling toward a mèta only partly revealed (the smallest figure seems to have a guitar in his arms, as if it were part of a concert, invisible yet evoked, while other characters, behind the first man on the right, are caught in bathing suits in a moment of play as if from snapshots on the beach). All in a kind of space-time co-presence that sums up a perfect glimpse of our present.

On a par with these “choral” narratives, which manage to elicit the same representational force even in smaller formats , as in the glimpses of beaches, characterized by that same unmistakably blue sky, other, more intimate themes should be considered, such as some scenes of a smaller format small where the subjects are as if taken by surprise (when not spied on) in moments of solitude in which they reveal simple yet universal gestures such as resting after a walk in the mountains (in the work Bliss) or the work Waiting for the man which sees a boy dressed like a man (dark shirt and pants) being caught playing (as if he had a hola hoop) outside an anonymous building, topped by the blue sky. The title in this case may provide us with the interpretive key to the artist’s own surprise at discovering how much joy and playfulness still linger in a young man when left to his own devices. The same intimate and non-pornographic joy found in the poses and looks of the small “erotic” works, which close the exhibition. Here, too, the artist’s interest is anthropological, emotional and devoid of judgment: his task is not to lay the groundwork for judgment but to construct an image that illustrates all the declinations of the wonder of human beings in all their attitudes.

The ability of the artist-anthropologist to illustrate all the nuances of the soul and behavioral aspects dulled by the communicative mainstream is also due to an expressive language honed over the decades, the result of a skillful reworking of heterogeneous sources, such as cinema, literature, music, comics, clubbing and underground culture and their harmonious integration.

Daniele Galliano lives and works in Turin. He made his debut on the Turin art scene in the early 1990s and already in 1996 held his first solo exhibition at the Annina Nosei Gallery in New York. In the same year he also held his solo show at the Galleria Nazionale in Rome. A figure always on the borderline between several cultural worlds, he follows with passion cinema, literature, comics and music. Among the numerous collaborations with realities “parallel” to the art world we remember: collaboration for two Marlene Kunz covers in the late 1990s; in 2003 Subsonica ’s video Dentro ai miei vuoti is made entirely with his paintings; together with Davide Borsa he will create an animation film that will be exhibited in 2013 at the GAM in Turin and at the Ljubljana Festival. In 2017 he will collaborate with Saturnino Celani for a live musical performance that will also be presented at the Triennale in Milan.

Major solo exhibitions in galleries and public institutions include: Livingstone Gallery, Netherlands (2021; 2013; 2006); Istituito Italiano di Cultura, Mexico City, Mexico (2018); Galleria In Arco, Turin (2017); Bad Trips, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India (2017); GAM, Turin (2013); Esso Gallery, New York (2008). His works have been shown in numerous group exhibitions in prestigious national and international venues, the main ones include: Disturbing Narrative, The Parkview Museum, Singapore (2020); Contemporary Chaos, curated by Demetrio Paparoni, Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium, Øvre Eiker, Oslo (2018); Bad Trips, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India (2016); Rimini Drawing Biennale, Rimini (2016); MART, Rovereto (2013); National Gallery of Modern Art (2011); 53rd Venice Biennale, Italian Pavilion, Venice (2009); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2005); Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato (2005).

For all information, you can visit the official website of Giovanni Bonelli Gallery.

The present according to Daniele Galliano on display in Pietrasanta

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