i've posted about artist nicola samori's works here & here & always with the feeling of hurried wonder, a palpable immediacy. i find that in the past i've been drawn to mostly illustrative works, tightly rendered & female centric. while these works still catch my eye, lately it has been looser, more visceral works that have pulled me into their deep emotional wells. nicola's new works for his current show 'die verwindung' in modena, have excelled in intensity; the figures have become increasingly demolished and obscured by the oil paint with which he conjures them into being. there has also been a quickening of the brazen act of quite literally punishing the surfaces he has created; paint is pulled off the canvas like layered skin, a face collapses like rotten fruit, limp against its frame, becoming something more, something different.
at the core of these violently beautiful manipulations is a challenge to art history. his masterful academic style speaks of the past, its gloominess, its crimes, its seemingly unending agony. & then there is its deformation, its metamorphosis; its ultimate transcendence. though there is no light & thusly an absence of hope among the ruins of both body & painting, there is a dark triumph in the works that speaks of the fleetingness of life, an acceptance (& perhaps even celebration) of the inevitable decay of the world.
