Nicola Samorì

09 June – 13 October 2013

Kunsthalle Dominikanerkirche,
Osnabrück
Hasemauer 1
49074 Osnabrück

www.osnabrueck.de

Opening hours:
Tu 1 pm – 6 pm
We – Fr 11 am – 6 pm
Sa – Su 10 am – 6 pm

2011, oil on wood, 35 x 65 cm” align=”left

January 26 – March 2013

Galleria Mazzoli Arte Contemporanea
Via Nazario Sauro, 62
41121 Modena

On Saturday, January 26th at 6.30 pm, Nicola Samorì will open his first solo exhibitionat Galleria Mazzoli in Modena. The title of the exhibition Die Verwindung (Overcoming)is taken from Heidegger and suggests a disloyal attitude to tradition, namely, a betrayal– which is also an uneasy transition – that recaptures and at the same time rethinksthe integuments of the painting. Such distortion/dislocation has permitted the artist toinvestigate and reinterpret the history of art, putting his crimes-pleasures of damaging thepainting into practice (a discipline that is accepted as an uncomfortable yet, at the sametime, necessary legacy).

In their doing and undoing, the paintings indulge an intrinsic shattering “of the identityand of the identical” which aims to comprehend the grammatical limits and the syntacticpossibilities of extremely diffuse images. Purloining the memories that languish in galleriesall over the world, Samorì thus decided to desecrate the masterpieces of art in the hopeof «understanding the violated vitality of our culture, an unconscious and material capital».Encouraging the instinctive and destructive force of formal organization, the pictures inthis exhibition shatter the harmony of the images in order to unveil and uproot the paintingitself.

Transforming his subjects into a material in the process of disintegration (which carriesthe unbearable onus of the agony on top of itself), the artist ultimately punishes thatwhich he has created, thus arriving at the inevitable and unrenounceable assassinationof the painting. In the works expressly created for the spaces of the gallery, NicolaSamorì actually wanted to upset, disfigure, and deform the painting, demonstrating itshaemophiliac aspect, of bloody metamorphosis.

Catalogue:
Nicola Samorì – Die Verwindung
with texts by Franco Rella and Alberto Zanchetta
Galleria Mazzoli Editore

Galleria Mazzoli
Arte Contemporanea
Via Nazario Sauro 62, 41121 Modena
Tel. 059243455 – Fax 059214980
info@galleriamazzoli.com
www.galleriamazzoli.com
orari: 10.00-13.00/16.00-19.00 (chiuso i festivi)

September 22–December 2, 2012

Kunsthalle Tübingen
Philosophenweg 76
Tübingen, Germany

The paintings by Nicola Samorì are full of sensuous energy. The 35-year-old artist arranges them like a Baroque master before partially destroying them again by intervening with a brush, palette knife, or scalpel. The Kunsthalle Tübingen invites the public to discover the paintings of this internationally aspiring Italian in his first solo museum exhibition.

The technical skills of the 35-year-old Italian can be measured against the Old Masters of the Renaissance or the Baroque period. Yet the painter from Romagna also has a leaning towards Italian postwar modernity and Arte Povera. Lucio Fontana, with his slits and perforations, is his model, as are Gino de Dominicis or Michelangelo Pistoletto. What he shares with them is the idea of creating something new out of what already exists by means of artistic transformation.
Samorì takes his subjects from art history: portraits, crucifixions, saints, still lifes, landscapes. His compositions for the most part conform to Baroque chiaroscuro. His figures emerge from the darkness of the pictorial space into the light with dramatic realism. Samorì completes his paintings in the style of the Old Masters with the highest degree of precision, causing the interventions he subjects them to to be all the more painful: he distorts them, smears them with his hand, disfigures them with the palette knife, paints them over, spills paint on them, or like a torturer removes the half-dry skin of the uppermost layer of paint with a scalpel. For all the destructive violence inherent in these virtuoso manipulations, his paintings are deconstructive compositions that make the historical pictorial legacy available to the contemporary viewer with the highest possible degree of sensuous energy. In recent years, Samorì has attracted a considerable amount of attention on the art market. His works are shown by galleries in Bologna, Trent, Turin, Milan, Berlin, Copenhagen, Cape Town, London, and New York. With this first solo museum exhibition, the Kunsthalle Tübingen is providing a broader public with the opportunity to become acquainted with works by this exceptional and highly talented artist. Besides approximately sixty paintings and five sculptural works by Samorì, an exquisite selection of Baroque works will be on display that inspired the artist, including a large oil painting that was just recently attributed to Jusepe de Ribera.

Philosophenweg 76 . 72076 Tübingen Tel. 07071 96 91 0 . Fax 07071 96 91 33
presse@kunsthalle-tuebingen.de . www.kunsthalle-tuebingen.de 2

General Information

Opening
Friday, September 21, 2012, 7:00 p.m.

Opening Hours
Daily (except Monday) 11:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.
Tuesday 11:00 a.m.–7:00 p.m.

Admission
Regular: €7.00, reduced: €5.00, pupils: €3.00

Catalogue
Nicola Samorì. Fegefeuer / Purgatory, edited and prepared by Daniel J. Schreiber, with texts on
the individual works by Davide Pairone and Alberto Zanchetta, ca. 144 pages,
ca. 100 color illustrations, hardcover