Cardi Gallery presents Italian artist Davide Balliano’s first solo exhibition

Cardi Gallery recently announced the first solo exhibition by artist Davide Balliano. Founded in the early ’70s by Renato Cardi to promote unique works of modern and contemporary Italian artists that he had started to presciently collect in the late 1960s, Milan-based Cardi Gallery till date hosts powerful exhibits that foster creativity while provoking cognitive dialogue between the visitor and the medium. The Italian artist whose research operates on the thin line of demarcation between painting and sculpture is currently showcasing at the gallery in Corso di Porta Nuova 38; open to visitors from January 19 to March 26, 2022.

Supplemented through an important corpus of new and unpublished artworks produced in 2021, the showcase offers its visitors a unique opportunity to discover Balliano’s visual language and to deepen his investigation regarding formal problems; uncovering an equilibrium between the severity of geometry and the warmth and weight of human experience.

Exploring and studying the systematic study of movement which is commonly apprehended as the commanding motion of nature, the inescapable rhythm of history - leads Balliano to produce the series Untitled, engaging artworks in black and white on crisp, linen canvases. In these oeuvres Balliano discontinues to work on wooden boards and adopts linen canvas, a light material that displays the texture of the pictorial material to appear as a primary element, meanwhile giving the artist the chance to work more freely than work within the confines of a rigid canvas imposed from the wooden support.

Defining the fundamental element of Balliano’s aesthetic, the intense interaction of black and white does not fully reject colour, however is constantly contemplating it. At the first glance, Balliano’s art installations appear meticulous, well-ordered and methodical, but upon closer examination, the application of black comes to life with scratches and abrasions that transform the austere surface into a highly material work, with sculptural results, emphasising how the unceasing encroachment between painting and sculpture is a fundamental element in his research.

Utilizing an austere, minimal language of abstract geometries in strong dialogue with architecture, artist Davide Balliano work investigates existential themes such as the identity of man in the age of technology and his relationship with the sublime. Through a practice that is self-described as monastic, austere and concrete, Balliano’s meticulous paintings appear, upon first glance, clean and precise. However, closer inspection reveals scrapes and scratches that uncover the organic wooden surface underneath the layers of paint, as a decaying facade of abandoned modernistic intentions. In addition to painting, Davide Balliano is also known for his sculptural work, which translates the visual vocabulary found in his paintings into solid objects, often in stainless steel or ceramics. Originally trained in photography, Balliano shifted to painting and sculpture in 2006 while relocating to New York, where he currently resides and works.

The exhibition is open to visitors from January 19 to March 26, 2022 at Cardi Gallery, Corso di Porta Nuova 38, Milan.