Daniele Galliano

Studio d’Arte Cannaviello, Milan
Through May 2

Through a careful selection the pieces on display, Daniele Galliano has succeeded in creating a show that furnishes a clear idea of the core theme that has lain at the root of his work from the very start in which he seeks to confront the relationship between social reality and pictorial representation. To do so, Galliano laid bare the connection–contraposition between the painting that gives the exhibition its name—Quando provo a fare meditazione sono sempre parecchio disturbato (Whenever I Try to Meditate, I’m Always Interrupted)—and the other paintings on display.

In this large canvas the artist portrays his naked body emerging from a background of fifty or so fragmented images of figures, erotic scenes, and other everyday scenarios. This chaotic collage almost entirely fills the gallery space. The other paintings on show—carefully orchestrated attempts to define landmark events in the artist’s life—contrast sharply to the “open” nature of this other composition.

Galliano utilizes a double working method: the initial photographs—taken, in all but one of these cases, by the artist himself—are then methodically re-elaborated in paint. This process serves as a way of “putting life under the microscope,” as a way of halting the inevitable passing of time and, perhaps, even the essence of life itself. Galliano’s images allow the observer to view and ponder at greater length about the world that surrounds, and often overwhelms, us.

And so it becomes possible to perceive the authentic poetry of the artist’s painting. Through an apparent photographic realism, which is far removed from hyperrealist formality, Galliano seeks to transmit the unsettling, problematic dialectic between reality’s subjective and objective dimensions.




Francesco Poli