Gaetano D'Aquino - 雕塑, MINA - 25 cm - 陶器 - 2020

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 diploma in the arts, 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 many specialized magazines and art catalogs.


EXHIBITIONS SOLO AND GROUP:

1998 May Artistic-Catanese, Catania (group show)

2000 Gallery, Il Massimo, Catania (solo)

2000 Incontro con La Pittura, Mascalucia (group show)

2001 Gallery, Giotto, Catania (solo)

2004 First contemporary art review, BOHEMIEN, city hall, 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, Siracusa Regional Office

2006 The Colors Inside and Outside the Green Rectangle, Visual Arts Festival, 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 Art and Creativity Day EMPIRE, Catania (group show)

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

2016 Gallery, Contemporaries Collections, Enna Bassa (group show)


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 the cognitive process. Put simply: one must know how to paint.

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

To frame the case of D`Aquino, Gaetano D`Aquino from Catania, in the right light, it is necessary to paraphrase Descartes. I paint, therefore I am. An axiom that leads the myth of the image, which we all are unknowingly carriers of by cultural heritage, to indicate the possibility that thought can 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 “screws” it, beginning to mark the graphic sketch, which then illuminates with colors, thus granting truth to the obtained image, lie precisely in that operation of mimesis, which we poor mortals do not know how to do: i.e., to bring to the surface - on the canvas, though limited and limiting - 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 calls real “total” artists, like D`Aquino.

Operator of the image, especially anatomical, which can be defined as hyperrealist, when in his civil, secular, profane icons he rescues the subject portrayed in the foreground, on the canvas, from the perils of impression, namely 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 meticulousness, playing with a capillary registration 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 wished to capture from the world those (now rare) fractions of plastic integrity and wished to revive them forever on his canvases. But of course it is not as easy to say.

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 crossed 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 mimesis of the absolute natural, to mark the surroundings with rigor, to restore exact somatic fidelity to anatomies.

It would be easy, as always happens with realism, realism, hyperrealism painters, even in this case, to invoke the now aged rights to interpretation that man, undoubtedly, must reclaim, and which - historically proven - have instead led the concept of art toward the non-distinction between meaning and signified of abstraction, toward the conceptual casualness of performances, toward the populist gestural of formless art, pardon informality, toward the automaticities of the photographic click, toward the non-spectral truth, even virtual, of computer art, toward the illusions of kinetic art. In one word, toward the chaos of definitions.

Ten thousand years after Altamira, we still do not know what art is. Exactly the opposite of the 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 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 unleashed my fascinating journey into the world of painting; full of various artistic successes, solo shows, and my works present around the world. I began with portraiture and then tackled different themes such as landscape, still life, and the nude.

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

Today, after a long painting experience and after facing 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 its role as 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 studying water is among the most difficult things to represent, and observing Turner’s paintings made me understand that water and light are almost impossible to essentialize.

Gaetano D`Aquino