Diego Gualandris

Diego Gualandris blows painting up. Even when he starts from a realistic subject or scene, the artist exaggerates forms and exasperates tones and colours until they disappear into endless stratifications and create tangled and surreal compositions. Indeed, his canvases are made of a generous accumulation of layers, which hide and unveil, evoking monsters, fantastic scenes and almost unrecognisable characters. Beyond the formal dynamism, Gualandris is interested in the organic nature of painting. In order to make the canvas lively and mutable, he experiments with the oxidation of oil colours, which may change in time and space. Painting with brushes, rags or clothes, Gualandris draws and fades the colours to generate an ensemble of shades and additions that incorporate and modify each other, eventually resulting in a porous and dizzying composition. For that reason, Gualandris forces the colours and the shapes to emerge as highly tactile and twisting sensations, such as that of the vine snake’s body, whose Spanish name bejuquilla is also the title of this work.

Diego Gualandris (Bergamo, 1993) He graduated in painting in 2018 from Accademia di Carrara in Bergamo. He has exhibited at: Quadriennale d’arte 2020, Rome; ADA, Rome (2019); Galerie Rolando Anselmi, Berlin (2018) and Fondazione Baruchello, Rome (2018). In 2020, he received the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant.