NYAB Event - Donato Giancola “Silent Tragedies”

Donato Giancola “Silent Tragedies”

Last Rites Gallery

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Silent Tragedies, new work by Donato Giancola, in what will be his first solo show at the gallery. Silent Tragedies will include 14 oil paintings and 16 works on paper that draw inspiration from the works of famous fantasy authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien and George R.R. Martin as well as the mind of Giancola himself. This particular body of work concentrates on moments of affliction and the raw state of the human condition at the genesis of what will most likely be a major decision or change in the narrative. Donato describes his attraction to these pivotal moments:

I believe a person’s true character reveals itself under moments of extreme duress. How an individual responds to situations and other people around them while so challenged speaks deeply to their internal motivations, sense of compassion, and own self-awareness. Taxing an individual to their emotional limit forces decisions and choices, which cannot be carefully planned, nor over thought, one must respond intuitively and desperately. It is these responses that I attempt to tap into to create my art, an individual is left exposed - unmasked and emotionally naked.

In addition to works of fiction, Giancola finds inspiration in history, photography and life and uses these experiences to interpret the ubiquitous themes depicted in his paintings. The narrative is always present and beckoning the viewer to simultaneously live out or recall the emotional state and its inescapable denouement. Through this mélange of elements, humanistic truths spanning through centuries of art envelops us and reverberates within our soul.

Giancola also looks to the work of traditional master painters such as Caravaggio, de Ribera, Velazquez, Waterhouse and Michelangelo in capturing climactic moments of flux and burden and translating the universal themes and morals in which they behold. Like his predecessors, Giancola offers his viewers a visual journey rather than a written one as timeless themes and lessons are translated with strokes of a paintbrush. Motifs of death, solitude and metamorphosis permeate not just Giancola’s paintings, but the lives of each and everyone of us as well as those who have come before and those who will come after.