Gaetano D' Aquino (1969) - Etna

Oil on canvas 48x45 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 obtaining his high school diploma with an artistic focus, he joined several contemporary artistic movements.

D`Aquino has embarked on his personal journey in painting, giving life to his creative visions 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 numerous specialized magazines and art catalogues.


EXHIBITIONS SOLO AND GROUP:

1998 May Artistic Sicilian, Catania (group show)

2000 Gallery, Il Massimo, Catania (solo)

2000 Meeting with Painting, Mascalucia (group show)

2001 Gallery, Giotto, Catania (solo)

2004 First Exhibition of Contemporary Art, BOHEMIEN, municipal palace, Acireale

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

2004 Gallery, Il Massimo, Catania (solo)

2005 Second Extemporaneous Painting Exhibition curated by Vittorio Sgarbi, Nineo

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

2006 The Colors Within and Outside the Green Rectangle, Visual Arts Contemporary Review, 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, Syracuse (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 show)

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

2016 Gallery, Contemporary Collections, Enna Bassa (group)


GAETANO D`AQUINO AND THE TRUTH OF BEING, OF 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. Plainly put: you must know how to paint.

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

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

The reasons why Gaetano D`Aquino approaches the white canvas and “inks” it, starting to mark the graphic sketch, which then lights it with colors, thus giving grace to the truth of the image obtained, lie precisely in that mimetic operation, which we poor common mortals do not know how to do: i.e., to bring to the surface - on the canvas, however limited - the external and internal horizons of the landscape, object, character, concept.

An operation that, in various stylistic forms, has traversed the centuries and the history of art but which voca (from vocare, vocation) increasingly rarely invites artists of “total” reality, like D`Aquino.

Operator of the image, especially anatomical, which can well be defined as hyperrealist, when in his civil, lay, profane “icons” he saves the subject in the foreground on the canvas from the pitfalls of impression, that is, the temptation to summarize, to essentialize. 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 precision, delicately handling 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, precisely - “as if” the painter from Catania wanted to capture from the world those (now rare) fractions of plastic integrity and make them live again forever on his canvases. But saying it is not easy, naturally.

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

It would be easy, as it often happens with verist, realist, hyperrealist painters, even in this case, to invoke the now obsolete rights to interpretation that man, undoubtedly, must claim, and which - as historical evidence shows - instead led the concept of art toward the non-distinction between meaning and signified of abstraction, toward the conceptual randomness of performances, toward the gregarious gestural of the informe art, pardon, informal, toward the automatisms of the photographic click, toward the non-spiegelbildliche truth, indeed virtual truth, of computer art, toward the illusions of kinetic art. In one word, toward the chaos of definitions.

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

Donat Conenna

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF MY ARTISTIC VISION

Since my childhood, I had the privilege of immersing myself in art, admiring the wonderful portraits of Emanuele Di Giovanni, the famous Sicilian painter. This was the initial enchantment that unleashed my fascinating journey into the world of painting; a path of 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.

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

Today, after a long painting 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, luster, transparency and as a life element, characteristic of my island; like the Etna volcano, also part of my studies, with its lava flows.

To date I have realized 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 essence-ize.

Gaetano D`Aquino