TEXT BY ANTONIO GRULLI:

Three ways to say the same thing. Three ways to say painting. This is what this exhibition is about.

There is nothing more electrifying than a new generation emerging, bringing new forms, new feelings, and cleaning up everything that is no longer able to speak. In recent years, Italy has witnessed a veritable new wave of extremely gifted young painters. We can speak of a renaissance of painting. They are artists - divided into groups scattered throughout the various centers of the peninsula - up-to-date and aware of the most interesting international painting research, but at the same time devoid of any sense of inferiority to what is happening abroad. And they are carefree and proud continuers of our country’s painting tradition.

Here, then, are three young painters, based in Milan, presenting themselves on the London scene after exhibitions held over the past year in Italy and abroad. They are Martina Cassatella, Roberto de Pinto and Emilio Gola. They met at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in the Lombard capital and have been sharing a studio ever since. Although each of them has already matured a precise and peculiar style, the three are united by a common spirit and by themes rooted in the bodies and poses of anatomy, between self-discovery, the creation of one’s own character, and the desire for encounter.

Martina’s paintings are made up of hands, light and subtle sinuous lines, which used to represent hair and which in her latest works become increasingly a formal matter. Three elements that allow her to investigate the way in which painting manages to become plastic form, the way in which colour becomes a nucleus of light, and the way in which the line can be a figure capable of activating and destabilising the pictorial surface, creating intense ghostly figures charged with magic, mystery and - why not? - spirituality. They bring to mind the many hands in the history of art, which, thanks to their magnetic force, have managed to take the leading role even in works in which they occupy a very small part. In her paintings, hands reclaim their ancestral role as the tool to every magical language, a source of energy, life and sensuality. In this latest series, fingers occupy almost the entire scene, stylised to be even more polished and performing in the way they interact with light and shadow. Whilst the lines resemble fingerprints finally freed from their epidermal prison and able to flow like long golden threads.

Roberto populates the canvas with bodies from the deep Mediterranean. They are the painter’s alter-egos, almost self-portraits, idle, immersed in water or in the shade of vegetation; sometimes only parts of faces or an anatomical details emerge, sometimes they are depicted in small groups, scantily clad, perhaps due to the heat. They amuse themselves with small flowers that look like something out of a botany textbook or some of Pisanello’s studies. Sensuality dominates, and the techniques he uses become an eroticism of the skin, with tans and shadows on bodies. He uses pastels, but especially encaustic, the central technique of his works, which has its roots far back in the history of painting and is inextricably intertwined with magical and miraculous moments of this language, such as the painting of the Fayum, very important to de Pinto himself. The Mediterranean basin is in fact one of his main sources of inspiration. His characters are depicted in two different tones and follow the classical division into red figures and black figures of Greek vase painting.

Emilio Gola’s work always starts from a base of drawing live models in the studio. Only after this phase of drawing force lines and creating the composition is the painting material applied. The bodies of his friends create temporary constellations that are constantly reformulating and searching for an equilibrium or gravitational centre. Sometimes the figure is single, without this ever resulting in portraiture. The point of view is always anomalous, almost elevated, and his characters are generally depicted upturned or upside down. It is a youthful world that seems to originate straight out of an album by some Britpop group from a few years ago, carrying a touch of nostalgia and something melancholic. The canvases are populated with a trove of objects - books (lots of them), candies, flowers, pencils, fortune cookies - that become fundamental pictorial material, just as the fabrics become abstract or decorative patterns in the midst of which the figures pose. The small paintings, on the other hand, frequently focus on details where shoes often take center stage, an object towards which Gola seems to have a predilection.

I find it magical how both painting and Italian painting are capable of unexpectedly arising and resurfacing in ways that are always new and fresh; you might think it’s the end of a glorious road, and then someone comes along, opens a little door, and a new, unexplored vast continent of possibilities opens up. Enjoy the journey.

Antonio Grulli

"OR THREE WAYS OF PUTTING THE SAME THING"

Group show with works by Martina Cassatella (1996), Roberto de Pinto (1996) and Emilio Gola (1994). CURATED BY ANTONIO GRULLI29 JUNE - 13 JULYARTNOBLE GALLERY HOSTED BY BEADVISORS9 FRENCH PLACE, LONDON - E1 6JB

Group show with works by Martina Cassatella (1996), Roberto de Pinto (1996) and Emilio Gola (1994).
CURATED BY ANTONIO GRULLI
29 JUNE - 13 JULY

ARTNOBLE GALLERY HOSTED BY BEADVISORS
9 FRENCH PLACE, LONDON - E1 6JB