How long does an image resist its disappearance? This is the question the works by Italian artist Nicola Samorì measure against.
His artistic career shows his attempt to endanger forms derived from the history of Western culture, recurring and dense expressions which live, sometimes involuntarily, inside our unconscious. Here the opening of the depicted body and of the pictorial surface alike are represented without a smooth transition.

 

Born in Forlì in 1977, he lives and works in Bagnacavallo (Ravenna). He attended the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna, from which he graduated in 2004. His early exhibitions include: Dei Miti Memorie at the Central TAFE Gallery in Perth (2003); TAC - Un paesaggio chiamato uomo at L’Ariete Arte Contemporanea in Bologna (2005), Lapsus in Forte Strino, Vermiglio (2006); Sine die at the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in Gibellina (2007); Arte Italiana 1968-2007. Pittura at Palazzo Reale, Milan; Not so private. With My Tongue in My Cheek at Villa delle Rose in Bologna (2008) and the 9th Premio Cairo at the Palazzo della Permanente, Milan (2008). In 2009 Samorì presented his Lo spopolatore project at the Museo di Riva del Garda and at the Forte di Nago, followed by an ample monographic exhibition at the Magazzini del Sale in Cervia and in the spaces of the Antico Convento di San Francesco in Bagnacavallo. La Dialettica del Mostro (Galleria Marcorossi artecontemporanea, Milan), in 2010, introduced a new orientation towards “incorporations”, which consist in changing the course of works of art of the past, altering and rewriting them while their bodies are still fresh. In the same year came his first open- ing up to the image using the technique of flaying the painted surface: like torn-off skin, the reverse of the form was exposed in all its freshness and brutality. This process clearly emerged in three exhibitions held in 2011: Baroque at the LARMgalleri in Copenhagen, Scoriada at the Studio Raffaelli in Trento and Imaginifragus at the Christian Ehrentraut Gallery in Berlin. The Venerable Abject at the Ana Cristea Gallery, New York (2012), brought a more radical approach of love and anger impressed upon sacred art. Works of recent years came together in Fegefeuer, his first museum exhibition abroad, at the Kunsthalle in Tübingen (September-December 2012). In January 2013 came Die Verwinding, the artist’s first solo exhibition at the Galleria Emilio Mazzoli in Modena. Here “the artist has ended up by chastising what he has previously created, thus bringing about an inevitable and indispensable assassination of painting”. (Alberto Zanchetta). His second solo exhibition at the Christian Ehrentraut Gallery was held in November 2013. Called Guarigione dell’Ossesso, it included a series of images that dealt with disillusionment and with the ability of the obsessed to cast aside the blind faith that makes them act. In every work he attempts to sabotage this senseless transport with regard to anatomy, to collecting and faith, and to the body and death. But in one work after another the healing of the obsessed is a promise that fails to find fulfilment because awareness alone does not suffice to moderate instincts.

Solo and group exhibitions took place in 2014 at Schauwerk in Sindelfingen, at Palazzo Chiericati in Vicenza, at MAC in Lissone, at the Kunsthalle in Kiel and at Rosenfeld Porcini gallery in London.
He had a solo show at TRAFO, Szczecin, in January 2015; then he was invited to represent Italy to the 56th International Art Exhibition la Biennale di Venezia ‘ALL THE WORLD’S FUTURES’ - ITALIAN PAVILION ‘Codice Italia’, Tese delle Vergini, Arsenale, Venice. In the same year he participated to Gare du Nord at the Anatomical Theatre in Amsterdam and, successively, to Gare du Sud at the Anatomical Theatre in Bologna.

In 2016, after a solo project at Monitor Gallery in Rome, he had his first solo show at EIGEN+ART Gallery in Leipzig. In October he was invited to the 16th Art Quadrennial at Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome.