Nicola Samori
Kazimir, 2010, oil on wood, 40×30 cm.
1I Veleno nelle ombre, 2010, oil on wood, 40 x 30 cm.
J.R.S.G. (del nascondimento), oil on copper, 100 x 100 cm.
Seer, 2011, oil on wood, 40x 30 cm.
Hans Holbein – écorché (estasi), 2010, oil on copper, 100 x 100 cm.
Origine dell’Occhio, 2011, oil on wood, cm 40 x 30 cm.
Agnese, 2009, oil on copper, 100 x 100 cm.
Terzi, 2010, oil on wood, 106 x 91 cm.
Artist Bio
Nicola Samorì was born in Forlì on 13th May 1977. After graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, the artist has exhibited since 1998 both in Italy and abroad. His early solo shows of note include that held at Santa Maria delle Croci (Ravenna) and at the Tafe Gallery in Perth (Australia). In 2002 he stripped his work of all its narrative markers to give way to the first great torn posters, printed with monotype on canvas, along with his works on metal, oriented from the start towards a reappraisal of 17th-century Dutch and Bolognese painting. The subjects are remote inventions that refer to nothing other than themselves: copperplate nightmares zooming in on the body. Up until 2006 he produced several dozen frontal female figures, almost salms thrown into the spectator, fleshing out the flatness of much contemporary photography and toning down the glamour. The surface is the result of layers of black painted film stretched over casual blotches of colour, in the attempt to unbind tone and light/shade contrast physically in order to rebind them optically. The exhibitions that best describe this area of his research were those held at the Galleria L’Ariete artecontemporanea in Bologna, at the Studio Raffaelli in Trento, at the Erdmann Contemporary Gallery in Cape Town as well as at Die Galerie in Frankfurt am Main.A new turning point was offered by his dialogue with sculpture, in which he favoured the practice of moulage, adopted as a medium through which to sound out the border between the living and the dead, between the moving and the inert. This was the beginning of his first molossus heads, dating back to 2004, followed by a long series of anti- portraits that turn the gaze inwards, leaving the vast stretches of skin to face the clash between the teachings of non-representational and its antithesis: a form of painting analytical to the point of paroxysm. The application process in fact provided a false perspective: every brushstroke was actually carried out on a separate support, before being removed and then remounted on the work. This gestural break was to be recognised in 2006 with his being awarded the Premio Michetti as well as with a long series of exhibitions to follow: Vermiglio (Forte austro-ungarico), Gibellina (Museo d’Arte Contemporanea), and Milan (Palazzo Reale). In 2007 his sculpture work stepped out of the shadow of his painting and started to dialogue with it, in terms of installations that at times make use of copies of famous works and their rabid manipulation (Villa delle Rose, Bologna, Mercati di Traiano, Rome).Nicola Samorì lives and works in Bagnacavallo (province of Ravenna).
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