Until May 17, 2025 the LAMB gallery in Mestre presents, curated by Francesco Liggieri, the result of Damiano Colombi’s two-year-long experimentation with painting materials. Ten Untitled works that, as the title of the exhibition suggests, carry a sense of reverence toward something greater, something illustrious, for which the artist feels a profound respect.
Damiano Colombi, “L’illustre ignoto”, exhibition view, courtesy LAMB, Mestre
The young artist’s proposal is compelling for the innovative relationship it establishes with the pictorial material. By investigating it empirically – through trials, experiments, many failures and breakthroughs that open up new avenues of research – he aims to create conditions that allow the material to express its physical properties in a state of extreme freedom. He explains: «My line of research follows the furrow where the will of thought meets the will of matter, and it is there that I encounter something unknown. Through a process of careful subtraction, I move toward an essentiality that allows one to go beyond visual data, notions and pre-established systems». Over the past two years, Damiano Colombi’s research has focused on eliminating the compositional parameters deeply rooted in his visual culture – parameters he realized he was still unconsciously adhering to during the act of painting.
Damiano Colombi, “Untitled”, 2023, acrylic on waxed paper, 29,7 x 21 cm, courtesy LAMB, Mestre
This led to the choice of a cognitive and experimental approach that brought him to discover in wax and paraffin a medium capable of making the painting surface suitable for the spontaneous manifestation of acrylic’s qualities. Between dripping and the material layering of pigment, he sought a new path – one that has nothing to do with imposing artistic will onto the material: there is no kinetic energy or pressure in the application of color to the surface. Instead, Colombi focused on the preparatory phase – the immersion of paper in wa, and the priming of canvas with paraffin – then observed the reaction of the acrylic paint, more or less diluted, as it was laid down in broad brushstrokes and roller passes reminiscent of graphic memory. In this way, he succeeded in establishing a new relationship with the pictorial technique, through a patient and exploratory dialogue with the material.
Damiano Colombi, “Untitled”, 2024, wax and acrylic on canvas, 170 x 140 cm, courtesy LAMB, Mestre
The elusiveness of the unknown that Colombi perceives and seeks to explore through his art becomes visually manifest in the way the acrylic pigment – or rather its residue – manages to adhere to the impermeable surface of the wax. The result is an interplay of transparencies and overlays that is deeply aesthetic, where the artist’s refined chromatic sensibility for intense complementary tones remains as his most personal imprint. The extremely respectful and attentive practice underlying Colombi’s work becomes, for the viewers, a cue for reflection on their own approach to life and the materiality of the environment we inhabit: how much do we still not know? How much of the reality around us is hidden by our own actions?
Damiano Colombi, “L’illustre ignoto”, exhibition view, courtesy LAMB, Mestre
And it is likely the existential dimension of Damiano Colombi’s work that caught the attention of the young Leo de Luca, artistic director of LAMB, who for the past two years has been dedicated to showcasing emerging artists in the storefront gallery on Via Giovanni Pascoli 11. Thanks to him and the curatorship of Francesco Liggieri, the exhibition offers a clear presentation of the artist’s poetics; it is built on a linear path in which the visual relationship between viewer and surface is progressively overturned. The delicate and luminous series of acrylics on waxed paper from 2023 is followed by the 2024 acrylics on canvas, culminating in a large-scale painting (200 x 340 cm) created specifically for the LAMB space and completed just one day before the opening. As visitors move through the show, they transition from microscopic observers of the precious A4 sheets to conscious participants in a “pulsing” universe of ever-shifting chromatic stratifications.
Info:
Damiano Colombi – L’illustre ignoto (The illustrious unknown)
curated by Francesco Liggieri
17/04/2025 – 17/05/2025
LAMB
Via Giovanni Pascoli 11, Venezia
www.instagram.com/lambxlab
I am an art historian who grew up in the Asolo hills and who has always been immersed in contemporary art thanks to the family business, of which I currently manage the Itaca Gallery exhibition space. I consider art a polyphonic key to reading the reality that surrounds me and this cognitive value, combined with the satisfaction I derive from its fruition, is what guides my projects.
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