The Shape of Gold. 4/12 – Antonello Viola

Antonello Viola

Isola di Favignana 1

Oro, turquoise, azzurro reale chiaro e giallo di Napoli, 2019-2021
oil, pencil and gold leaf on glass plates

four elements, each 80 x 80 cm

Isola di Favignana 2

Oro, turquoise, helio green e giallo di Napoli, 2019-2021

oil, pencil and gold leaf on glass plates

two elements, each 80 x 80 cm

From 9 April to 6 May 2021, BUILDINGBOX presents an unreleased installation by Antonello Viola (Rome, 1966), the fourth artist of The Shape of Gold, the annual exhibition project curated by Melania Rossi, which investigates the use of gold in contemporary artistic research through the works of twelve artists invited to compete with the chosen theme. The installations are visible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from the window in via Monte di Pietà 23 in Milan.

For Antonello Viola, painting is a manifesto, the affirmation of a constitutive ideal.
There is no escape from painting, just as we can never get too far away from ourselves, so much so that the artist delimits the space dedicated to color by drawing a boundary, within which he then stratifies, subtracts, deletes and overwrites with oils and gold leaf. Viola thus achieves the formal composure that allows him to move freely in the temporal dimension. He crosses the line of time: his works can be years in the making, during which time the layers of oil paint and the gold backgrounds accumulate forming the skin of the work, which bears all the signs of the passing of time, decisions and second thoughts. In his works the figure seems to have evaporated and even the support for the painting loses weight.

In the course of his career, Viola came to abandon canvas, opting instead for Japanese paper and glass, in order to move away from the romanticism, the academicism that canvas brings with it. It was a move towards absolute painterly purity. The artist does not look for metaphors, he is not interested in giving an explanation or a narrative reading of his work. Nevertheless, we perceive a distinctive form of mysticism, achieved with rigor and method. Every change of mood, however slight, is made visible in the form of a scratch, a line, a hidden background. Making the invisible visible, giving space to pure interiority rather than an account of it, inevitably acquires a social dimension, a universal meaning.

For The Shape of Gold, Viola presents an installation consisting of two works of painting and gold leaf on glass, created specifically for BUILDINGBOX. Gold has been part of his palette for about ten years, and he has studied its chromatic and textural potential. The presence of gold backgrounds in different shades gives his works iconic connotations, referencing Medieval gold backgrounds and Byzantine icons, but with a contemporary, almost iconoclastic approach that addresses inner dynamics, personal memories and the perception of time.

Corruptible/stainless, material/spiritual, private/universal, are the opposites that emerge from Antonello Viola’s use of the king of metals.