Thoughts are nothing more than electrical impulses produced by the brain, cognitive synapses between accumulations of experiences and memories. A journey into the physical and tangible unknown, which cannot be seen through to the end. We question ourselves on the rationality of existence, merging other elements with matter, in a synaesthetic ecstasy of the act, of the path, of manual dexterity as a stance. Such matter becomes a hardened messenger, shaped by the future, between space and time.

Giorgio Milano, Heliogabalus, 2022, acrylic and vinyl on linen, 100 x 100 cm, courtesy 480 Site Specific, Danilo Donzelli photography

The PetraFicta exhibition is this recurring, changing journey and Giorgio Milano – an Italian-Canadian painter from ’74 – is its first wayfarer. He is a painter who makes mysticism his aesthetic. The images he produces are the result of a cauldron of references and stimuli from several planes of knowledge. From literature to quantum physics, from filmography to ancient philosophy, every interlude between these fields enhances interdisciplinary research. His painting is technical and meticulous, traced and abstract, with precise lines in which the spreading of colour follows a geometric rationality. A (partly) unconscious manuality tuned – precisely – to aesthetic flow. The painting – through an interplay of visual perception – represents a metacognitive language in which the image is created even before its actual concreteness. The act of ‘making’ is only a compulsory consequence, the consequence of the “aesthetica in nuce” that Benedetto Croce proffered.

Giorgio Milano, Moby Dick e Mayorana, 2023, acrylic and vinyl on linen, 100 x 80 cm, courtesy 480 Site Specific, Danilo Donzelli photography

For 480 Site Specific – the home space of collectors Luca Piciocchi and Gabriella Pascale in Naples – Giorgio Milano, assisted by the young curator Massimiliano Bastardo, brings ten works from his ‘journey’, each telling a story of its own and seemingly disconnected from one another. The ten paintings on display are the reflections and tales of an Ovidian life, in continuous metamorphosis in the contemporary world. Named after one of them, PetraFicta represents a Menhir (‘long stone’ in Breton), that sacrilegious and mystical symbol associated with the continuation of life with all that can change in it.

Giorgio Milano, Petra Ficta, 2021, acrylic and vinyl on linen, 100 x 80 cm, courtesy 480 Site Specific, Danilo Donzelli photography

This symbol is repeated in the other works, emphasising this concept of change according to the position and conformation that Milano gives it. An example of this is the work Labrys which, in addition to recalling the floor of the San Severo Chapel in Naples in its depiction, moralises the labyrinth of Theseus and the Minotaur as the random and chaotic sophistication of existence. The same goes for the work Moby Dick e Mayorana, which combines fictitious literature with political reality to convey the importance of the journey rather than the ultimate goal.

Giorgio Milano, PetraFicta, installation view, courtesy 480 Site Specific, Danilo Donzelli photography

The PetraFicta exhibition is Giorgio Milano’s multiverse, made up of subjective experiences and objective knowledge. Reality is formed on nodes of interactions, and the line that connects his works branches off into other lines of thought that take hold of colours and shapes, time and space.

Info:

Giorgio Milano. PetraFicta
curated by Massimiliano Bastardo
05/05 – 16/06 2023
480 Site Specific
Via T. Tasso 480, Napoli

Andrea Guerrer

Actor and performer, he loves visual arts in all their manifestations.