Emilio Gola
In a sleepy, frivolous atmosphere, at the centre of each painting a few disengaged young people give in, distracted or too absorbed in their divertissements, in a mysterious and timeless moment, in no specific place, leaving it to painting itself to define them. Drawing from life is the paradigm of every painting, which begins by trying to capture all the freedom granted to the models while posing, their carefree adolescent lightness. By letting the others play, with only the intrusion of the eye drawing on the canvas, the scene is free to come to life, amid the precious contrasts of play and boredom, in embraces and spontaneous gestures.
The paintings suggest the struggle between self-definition and the dematerialisation of everyday reality: a relationship of the figures with themselves or with objects, understood as tools in the search for identity, especially teenage identity. A tale of a simple and chaotic world, which reappears in the image of the eternal child’s upturned bedroom.
He graduated in Architecture from the Politecnico di Milano (2019) and obtained a second-level Academic Diploma in Painting from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts (2021). In 2022 he won the Caserini Due Torri Hotel Prize for painters under 35 at ArtVerona and was a finalist for the Francesco Fabbri Prize for Contemporary Art. In 2022 he took part in the group show Tre modi per dire la stessa cosa at ArtNoble Gallery, Milan, curated by Antonio Grulli, presented again in London in 2023 as Or three ways of putting the same thing. In July 2022 Vogue Italia named him “Artist of the Month” (“Amo il caos”, by Mariuccia Casadio); in March 2023 Arbiter published an “Artist’s portrait” of him (by Daniele Fenaroli). For October 2023 he was announced in Pittura Italiana at Triennale Milano, curated by Damiano Gullì, and in a solo show at Annarumma Gallery, Naples.