Nicola Samorì

The Venerable Abject

May 17 – June 23, 2012

Ana Cristea Gallery

521 West 26th Street

New York, NY, 10001

www.anacristeagallery.com

Ana Cristea Gallery is pleased to present “The Venerable Abject,” the first solo exhibition in the UnitedStates by artist Nicola Samorì.

Nicola Samorì makes seductive, profound paintings by layering and fusing images on canvas, woodor copper and then obliterating them by scratching, erasing, fingering and painting over the surfacesmultiple times. By violating the golden rule of all museums (“Please do not touch the artwork.”) Samorìis making art history by corrupting his own work and imposing a new Samorì on top. The resulting layersof paint create a new skin that bears the bruises and permanent marks of all prior creative efforts.

Selecting portraits and still lifes from classical paintings but also sourcing random faces and imagesfrom the Web, Samorì is engaged in a project about time and corrosion. Mythological and religiousfigures dominate Samorì canvasses. In “L Abietto Venerabile” the two hands held up with open palmssignal readable gestures (surrender, grace, or blessing) but the spliced visage is streaked with horror.In “Tantalo” based on the Greek myth of Tantalus’s eternal punishment, several portraits sit on top ofone another, making it impossible to determine which figure the artist is honoring. The viewer mayinterpret the mythic or religious connotations of the many visible arms and wardrobe changes of thissaintly figure—but time has contributed to his (or her) erasure. Samorì has assumed the role of creatorand destroyer thereby giving him license to speed up or freeze time and to reincarnate from one life tothe next in between lunch. (Samorì lives and paints in a Renaissance church in Bagnacavallo, Italy.) Byassuming this artist privilege to make and to erase (to give and to take), Samorì is offering us his deeplypersonal views about life and death. Each work beats a pulse; giant blots and thumbprints of colorrace across the surfaces only to be stalled by a pileup of oil paint. In that moment of halt, the viewer isinvited to look into the keyhole of the experiences already lived.

For additional information, please contact Ana Cristea Gallery by phone at (212) 904-1100 or by e-mailat info@anacristeagallery.com. The gallery is located at 521 West 26th Street between 10th and 11thAvenues and is open from Tuesday through Saturday from 11am to 6pm.

: 2012, oil on linen, 200 x 150 cm

: 2012, oil on linen, 200 x 300 cm

2012-05-02

VOLTANY

March 8 -11 2012

New York, NY

Solo show, presented by LARMgalleri

http://ny.voltashow.com

: 2011/2012, alabaster, iron, 50 x 23 x 23 cm

: 2011/2012, alabaster, iron, 50 x 23 x 23 cm

: 2011/2012, oil and paper on wood, 29 x 17 cm

: 2011/2012, oil on wood, 40 x 30 cm

: 2012, oil and fire on copper 70 x 70 cm

: 2012, oil and fire on copper, 100 x 100 cm

: 2012, oil on linen, 200 x 145 cm

: 2012, oil on linen, 290 x 200 cm

2012-02-28

Point of Entry

January 19 – February 18, 2012

Ana Cristea Gallery
521 West 26th Street
New York, NY, 10001
www.anacristeagallery.com

Ana Cristea Gallery is pleased to present “Point of Entry”, a group show that brings together the work of three remarkable artists: Oliver Clegg, Daniel Pitin and Nicola Samorì. The artists are all figurative painters concerned with the relationship between the surface they paint on and the subjects they depict. Each painter approaches this way of working from his own unique perspective, but each is concerned with how the viewer becomes implicated in the journey of the expression and resolution of the artist’s ideas and feelings. Art, particularly painting has the ability to render that which is invisible, visible. Atmospheres and memories can be translated into a form that can not only be seen but also felt. With this in mind, the question of how the viewer can ‘enter’ a painting becomes even more pertinent.

: 2011, oil on copper, 100 x 100 cm

: 2011, oil on wood, 70 x 50 cm

: 2011, oil on wood, 27 x 19 cm

2012-01-09

LA BELLEZZA NELLA PAROLA

04 Novembre 2011 – 11 Dicembre 2012

Palazzo Reale
Piazza del Duomo
Milano

La mostra presenta il nuovo Evangeliario Ambrosiano, il volume usato nella solenne lettura delle celebrazioni liturgiche, le cui pagine accolgono le tavole di Nicola De Maria, Mimmo Paladino, Ettore Spalletti, Giovanni Chiaramonte, Nicola Samorì e Nicola Villa. Il progetto si è sviluppato a seguito della pubblicazione della nuova edizione dell’Evangeliario Ambrosiano che il Cardinale di Milano, Dionigi Tettamanzi, ha voluto realizzare in dialogo con l’arte contemporanea, con l’intento di avvicinare le persone al messaggio evangelico attraverso un linguaggio artistico del nostro tempo. Accanto alle 73 tavole realizzate per il nuovo Evangeliario Ambrosiano, visibili insieme per la prima e unica volta prima di essere rilegate nel volume originale che verrà in seguito consegnato all’uso liturgico del Duomo, la sezione a Palazzo Reale presenterà, per la prima volta insieme, manufatti d’arte antica di straordinaria bellezza. A segnare il passaggio all’arte contemporanea sarà l’Evangeliario di Paolo VI, lo stesso che venne posto sulla bara di Giovanni Paolo II, nel giorno delle sue esequie.

Nicola Samori – LA BELLEZZA NELLA PAROLA

2010, oil on linen, 300 x 200 cm

2011-11-23

Imaginifragus

October – 17 December 2011

Galerie Christian Ehrentraut
Friedrichstraße 123
10117 Berlin (U-Bhf Oranienburger Tor)
www.christianehrentraut.com

Samorì’s works often refer to Italian 17th century painting by the selection of motives as well as by his painting technique. Still lifes, portraits, devotional paintings and landscapes develop through enormous technical skills over a long span of time and through numerous layers of paint on copper, wood or canvas. But Samorì withholds the imaginary „finished“ painting from us and reverses the process of origin drastically: He purposely destroys the image surface, attacks selected parts with a palette-knife, with diluent or with his bare hands until he tears off the (oil-)skin from his painted figures. Physicalness and the body are most important for Samorì’s paintings and the process of skinning stresses this importance. Samorì builds up his „body of work“ with an abundance of art-historical references and masses of paint just to forcefully destroy them. By focusing on the materiality and artificiality of the image, Samorì negates classical represenation and questions painting itself.
To prepare for his first German solo exhibition at Galerie Christian Ehrentraut, Samorì moved his studio from Italy to Berlin temporarily. All works for „Imaginifragus“ were finished in Berlin.
An etching in an edition of twelf will be published on the occasion of the exhibition.