Gaetano D'Aquino - MINA

Patinated terracotta sculpture by Gaetano D' Aquino with authenticated photo

Gaetano D`Aquino was born in Catania on August 30, 1969, where he currently resides and works. After earning a high school art diploma, he joined several contemporary artistic movements.

D`Aquino has embarked on his personal journey in painting, bringing his creative visions to life through a variety of themes and techniques. This path has made him a distinguished representative of contemporary art.

D`Aquino's works have been acquired by numerous important public and private collections and have found space in many specialized magazines and art catalogs.



SOLO AND GROUP EXHIBITIONS:

1998 May – Artistically Catanese, Catania (group)

2000 Gallery, Il Massimo, Catania (solo)

2000 Incontro con La Pittura, Mascalucia (group)

2001 Gallery, Giotto, Catania (solo)

2004 First Exhibition of Contemporary Art, BOHEMIEN, Palazzo Comunale, Acireale

2004 Art Event KATACLOÒ, Teatro Metropolitan, Catania (Group)

2004 Gallery, Il Massimo, Catania (solo)

2005 Second Extemporary Painting, curated by Vittorio Sgarbi, Nineo

2005 Literary and Artistic Prize ARETUSA Terzo Millennio, painting section, first prize, Centro Siculo per la Diffusione della Cultura, Siracusa Regional Headquarters

2006 The Colors Inside and Outside the Green Rectangle, Visual Arts Exhibition, Hotel Luna, (Oleggio Castello, Milan) curated by Donat Conenna

2007 Arte Fiera, Le Ciminiere, Catania

2007 Gallery, Arte Nuvò, Catania (solo)

2007 Gallery, Art Gallery Ortigia, Siracusa (solo)

2008 Tremestieri, Arte XIV edition, Tremestieri Etneo

2009 Gallery, Il Massimo, Catania (solo)

2012 Gallery, Civico 69, Florence (solo)

2015 Day of Art and Creativity EMPIRE, Catania (group)

2015 Europa Eventi Arte, Porte di Catania shopping center (Group)

2016 Gallery, Contemporary Collections, Enna Bassa (group)



GAETANO D`AQUINO AND THE TRUTH OF BEING: A NOTE BY DONAT CONENNA

To reach the truth of being (in the character, in the object, and in every other visual concept) there must be the suffering of cognitive proceeding. Translated into plain words: one must know how to paint.

In a second moment we can consider all the motions of the “es” (express, externalize, escutere, expose) that lead man to become the expresser of realities, external and internal to him.

To frame the case of D`Aquino, Gaetano D`Aquino from Catania, we need to paraphrase Descartes. I paint, therefore I am. An axiom that leads the myth of the image, of which we all are unaware bearers by cultural heritage, to indicate the possibility of thought reaching being. For artists, this kind of “Buonarroti syndrome” (“Why don’t you speak?”) is felt - naturally more or less - in relation to one’s own narrative possibilities.

The reasons why Gaetano D`Aquino approaches the white canvas and “stains” it, starting to mark the graphic sketch, which then lights with colors, thus granting the grace of truth to the obtained image, lie precisely in that operation of mimesis, which we poor ordinary mortals do not know how to do: i.e., to bring to the surface - on the canvas, though limited and limiting - the outer and inner horizons of the landscape, object, character, concept.

A process that, in various stylistic forms, has traversed the centuries and the history of art but which vocates (from vocare, vocation) ever more rarely artists of a “total” reality, like D`Aquino.

Operator of the image, especially anatomical, that can well be defined hyperrealist, when in his “icons” civil, lay, profane, saves the subject brought to the foreground, on the canvas, from the hazards of impression, i.e. the temptation of summarizing, of essentializing. The velvety “Body of a woman” is the narration of a woman's body: no one would think to see the other.

D`Aquino works with infinite polish, playing with a capillary marking of the epidermal details of the work, which then envelops in a sequence of color glazes, until obtaining the uniqueness of the subject, indeed - “as if” - the painter from Catania wanted to capture from the world those (now rare) fractions of plastic integrity and wanted to relive them forever on his canvases. But saying it that way is not natural.

And here is his slow, meditated orientation toward the real: even in the stillness of a single frame, the being, the “living” of a landscape, an object, a character, a concept, are crossed by a light that we define as “photographic,” but which in Gaetano D`Aquino is nothing more than the voluptuous desire to reach the mime of absolute nature, to mark with rigor the surrounding, to reproduce exact somatic fidelity to the anatomies.

It would be easy, as always happens with verist, realist, hyperrealist painters, even in this case, to invoke the now antiquated rights to interpretation that man, undoubtedly, must claim, and which - it is historically established - has instead driven the concept of art toward the indistinction between meaning and signifier of abstraction, toward the conceptual contingency of performances, toward the populist gestural of art inform, pardon informal, toward the automatism of photographic click, toward the non-mirror truth, indeed virtual, of computer art, toward the illusions of kinetic art. In short, toward the chaos of definitions.

Ten thousand years from Altamira, we still cannot say what art is. Exactly the opposite direction in which this Sicilian operator has positioned himself, with his reaffirmed, calm, palpable, tactile, anthropic narrative completeness.

Donat Conenna

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF MY ARTISTIC VISION

Since my childhood, I have had the privilege of immersing myself in art, admiring the wonderful portraits of Emanuele Di Giovanni, the famous painter from Catania. This was the initial enchantment that sparked my fascinating journey into the world of painting; a journey filled with various artistic successes, solo exhibitions, and my works found around the world. I began with portraiture and then tackled different themes such as landscapes, still life, and the nude.

Personally, I try to express and highlight what others do not see and show it through my eyes. I define painting as a silent poetry, as Leonardo Da Vinci said.

Today, after a long artistic experience and after addressing various subjects, I have focused on the intense study of Sicily, my homeland. In particular on water, in all its nuances, its reflections, colors, shine, transparency, and how it is a life element, characteristic of my Island; like Mount Etna, also part of my studies, with its lava flows.

I have realized to date that the study of water is among the most difficult things to represent, and observing Turner’s paintings I understood that water and light are almost impossible to essentialize.

Gaetano D`Aquino