calendario eventi  :: 

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27/3/2008

Two exhibitions

Esso Gallery, New York

Daniele Galliano

Jennifer Bacon and Filippo Fossati are pleased to announce the opening of the gallery’s first solo exhibition by Italian painter Daniele Galliano on Friday, March 28, 2008

It has been a long time since Italy has produced a painter so aware of what it means to reproduce reality in painting. According to a large number of art critics who have written about his work he is considered one of the most influential painters of his generation. Daniele Galliano will present a series of paintings grouped under the title “Marziani”. In English the title can be easily translated to mean Martians, but in Italian, the word implies more then just the hypothetical and fictional inhabitant of Mars. It suggests the idea of somebody out of the ordinary for various and sometime obvious reasons such as an inhabitant from another world, in which case the word Marziani can be translated as Aliens. This new body of work presented at Esso Gallery is composed of 8 large paintings and several smaller ones made by Daniele Galliano in the last 6 months depicting such various scenes as a street demonstration of Buddhist monks, a meeting of the European parliament to African immigrants in Italy.

Daniele Galliano works in his studio as an adventurous explorer, a traveler, his art is a constant discovery. As a witness who accepts as many images as he can, he doesn’t try to explain them. Like a child who sees new things for the first time, there is no preparation in receiving visions nor in putting them on canvas (except for the basic preparation of the painter which he masters with absolute skillfulness). This doesn’t mean that he is a passive witness, in fact the histories that jump off his paintings don’t coincide with those of the real world, they are not the recording of it but become a point of view, a point of conscience. The repossession of sentiment next to reason, the strength of art as experience, becomes a discovery. The painter’s desire of solitude when making a painting sets off a series of questions, what does it mean to be set apart, to not find originality in the others, but to find it only in oneself? What does it mean to comprehend what is the profession, to analyze every single operation, every single act, to take it apart as one would do with a machine in order to know, to know oneself? Galliano has arrived at the point where the medium, painting itself, becomes the protagonist and doesn’t aim to represent anything else but itself.

Daniele Galliano was born 1961 in Pinerolo, Italy. He lives and works in Torino, Italy. His work has been exhibited internationally, including Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Roma, Italy; Palazzo Reale, Milano, Italy; Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Torino, Italy; 9th Havana Biennial, Wifredo Lam Art Center for Contemporary Arts, Cuba; Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea di Trento, Italy; Urban Planning Exhibition Center, Shanghai, China; Capital Museum, Bejing, China; Kunsthalle, Goppingen, Germany; Museo d’Arte, Nuoro, Italy; Galería Distrito Cu4tro, Madrid, Spain; Le Magasin, Grenoble, France; Livingstone Gallery, Den Haag, NI, and Artiscope, Bruxelles, Belgium. Prior to “Martians” at Esso Gallery, his work has not been shown in the US since his solo show at Annina Nosei Gallery, NY in 1997. His work is in the public collections of Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Trento, Italy; Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Torino, Italy; and the collection of Unicredit Private Banking, Milano.

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Jennifer Bacon and Filippo Fossati are pleased to announce the opening of Esso Gallery’s first solo show by Marguerite Kahrl, entitled Homeland Insecurity, in the project room.

Homeland Insecurity is an installation work consisting of three artificial industrial hemp plants with an accompanying soundtrack which refers to the contested political history of industrial hemp in the U.S. Running through an electronic filter it transforms the hemp research into a covert, subliminal message—a form of manipulation, concealed from the conscious mind, often used as a tool in advertising and political campaigns.

In 1937, under pressure from the Hearst Paper Division and Dupont, Congress passed a prohibitive tax on the cultivation of one of the nation’s premier renewable resources. Fearing competition to their timber and petrol-synthetic products, the companies sought to cast industrial hemp as identical to marijuana. In contrast to the smear campaign of that era, “Homeland Insecurity” incorporates factual data to counter the soiled reputation of a crop with as yet underdeveloped environmental and economic benefits. The aim of the show is to blend fact and fiction and ultimately inspire the viewer to question our present reality.

Marguerite Kahrl was Born 1966 in Beverly MA and lives and works in New England and Ivrea, Italy. She holds an M.F.A. from Rhode Island School of Design. A 2007 recipient of the Joan Mitchell Grant, her work has been exhibited internationally in museums and galleries including Weather Report: Art and Climate Change, curated by Lucy Lippard at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, CO; Workspace Program 2001-2-07, Dieu Donné, NY; Wave Hill, Bronx, NY; Palazzo Rizzo Patarol, Venice, Italy and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy. She will have a solo exhibition in Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson, AZ, in 2008.

Image Daniele Galliano

Contact: Natane Takeda, 212 560 9728 or info@essogallery.com

Opening Friday, March 28, 2008 from 6 to 8 p.m.

Esso Gallery
531 West 26th Street 4th floor - New York
Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 11 p.m. - 6 p.m.
Admission free

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