Gaetano D' Aquino (1969) - Meditazione

Oil on canvas 50x60 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 the artistic maturity diploma at the high school, 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 Artistico Catanese, Catania (group)

2000 Gallery, Il Massimo, Catania (solo)

2000 Incontro con La Pittura, Mascalucia (group)

2001 Gallery, Giotto, Catania (solo)

2004 First contemporary art review, BOHEMIEN, municipal palace, Acireale

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

2004 Gallery, Il Massimo, Catania (solo)

2005 Second Estemporanea di Pittura curated by Vittorio Sgarbi, Nineo

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

2006 The Colors Inside 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, 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, Collezioni Contemporanee, 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. In plain words: one must know how to paint.

At a later stage we can consider all the motions of the “es” (to express, to externalize, to hear, to expose) that lead man to become an expressive of external and internal realities.

To frame in the right light the case of D`Aquino, Gaetano D`Aquino from Catania, one must 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 to reach being. For artists, this kind of “Buonarroti syndrome”, (“Why don't you speak?”) is felt - naturally more or less - in relation to their 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 up with colors, thus giving 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 - the outer and inner horizons of the landscape, object, character, concept.

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

Operator of the image, especially anatomical, which can well be defined hyperrealist, when in his civil, lay, secular “icons” he saves the subject brought to the foreground on the canvas from the snares of impression, i.e., 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 delicacy, playing with a capillary marking of the epidermal details of the work, which he then envelops in a sequence of color glazes, until obtaining the uniqueness of the subject, precisely - “as if” - the painter from Catania wanted to pry from the world those (now rare) fractions of plastic integrity and wanted to revive them forever on his canvases. But it is not as easy as saying it, naturally.

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, of an object, of a character, of a concept, are traversed by a light that we by definition call “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 restore exact somatic fidelity to anatomies.

It would be easy, as 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 - it is historically established - has instead led the concept of art toward the non-distinction between meaning and signifier of abstraction, toward the conceptual contingency of performances, toward the populist gestural of the informe art, pardon, informal, toward the automatisms of photographic click, toward the non-mirror truth, indeed virtual, of computer art, toward the illusions of kinetic art. In one word, toward the chaos of definitions.

Ten thousand years 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, tangible, tactile, anthropic complete narrative.

Donat Conenna


BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF MY ARTISTIC VISION

Since childhood, I had the privilege of immersing myself in art by admiring the wonderful portraits of Emanuele Di Giovanni, the renowned Catania painter. This was the initial enchantment that triggered my fascinating journey into the world of painting; filled with various artistic successes, solo exhibitions, and my works found around the world. I started 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 to show it through my own eyes. I define painting as a silent poetry, as Leonardo Da Vinci said.

Today, after a long painting experience and after facing various subjects, I have focused on an intense study of Sicily, my land. Specifically on water, in all its shades, its reflections, colors, luster, transparency and as a life element, characteristic of my island; like Mount Etna, 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 essentialize.

Gaetano D`Aquino