Nicola Samori (b. 1977). Italian.
Neo-Baroque??
Nicola Samori is fucking incredible. He works out of Italy, and he’s managed to nail the style of the Old Masters: his exhibitions contain everything from beautiful Baroque saints to Flemish still lifes — all painted now, in the modern era, in his studio. And that would be amazing in and of itself, but his work is so much more than simple reproduction. See, once he’s finished with a painting, or once he’s adapted one that’s been previously created, he takes a scalpel to it, a spatula, or a square of sandpaper, and begins to peel it apart. He flays painted skin right off his subjects’ bones.
Sometimes the “destruction” of the images asks the audience to think about what, exactly, the painting communicates when it’s whole. Other times it adds a strange level of corporeality to religious works, or gives portraits a darkly spiritual dimention they never had before.
He’s said in interviews that he views the layers of paint on the canvas as analogous to the muscle and tissue of the human body, and that by wearing it away, he changes the identity of the paintings themselves.
Dark and sometimes chilling as it is, I think his work is genuinely brilliant, and he’s one of my favorite living artists.
(Long story short, here’s his website, go check it out!)
