PSYCHOPHAGÒMENOS

Psychophagòmenos

Psychophagòmenos

david dalla venezia

new paintings

october 2014 - jannuary 2015

galerie burkhard eikelmann d端sseldorf

6 31

Oil on canvas 35x27 2011

Psychophagòmenos ‘The one who is eaten by butterflies’; or, since ψυχή ‘psyché’ in ancient greek mean primarily ‘soul, spirit’, ‘the one who is eaten by his own soul’...

One morning of 1846 Jules Champfleury walked along the Seine fantasizing about his libretto Harlequin eaten by the butterflies when, rummaging through second-hand books in a bookstall, he found a brochure entitled “On the Nature of hyperphysical man” by Jean Wallon . He opened it and read: « Spiritual man will definitively get rid of the death, he will kill, crush the death to achieve his higher destinies; he will then be released from the material and contingent conditions hindering his progresses. The psychological or physical faculties, the only so far known and studied, will become hyperphysical faculties, and the spirit will rejoice in all its creative spontaneity. » The harlequin eaten by the butterflies was abandoned and Champfleury wrote in eight days another pantomime Pierrot, servant of the Death.

After a long time, reading an illuminating essay on the figure of Pierrot, I was in turn struck by that abandoned title and had a vision which then became a painting.

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Oil on canvas 65x50 2014

David Dalla Venezia interview by David Molesky

I first met David Dalla Venezia outside the museum that hosted an exhibition of the late pictures of Tiziano Vecellio, who is known simply as “Titian” in America.

Considered the most important member of the 16th Century Venetian School, Titian was commonly referred to during life time as “da Cadore,” meaning from the town of his birth: Cadore. Similarly Dalla Venezia’s family name originated from the 18th Century custom to give orphaned children a surname based on the town where they were found.

I was struck by how stoic my new friend seemed. It was as if he was formed of the same stone that lines the canals of his floating city. But soon learned that, like all Venetian exteriors, his was only fortifying a generous heart. We ran into each other again at Odd Nerdrum’s exhibition in France. Upon mentioning my plans to deliver a painting to Düsseldorf in person, he shared contact information for his art dealer, who is based there, and encouraged me to visit, an uncommon altruism between artists.

I took him up on his offer. The Burkhard Eikelmann Gallery, located in the Oberkassel quarter, had the industrial spaciousness of a New York gallery and the rich wood of old Europe. The exhibitions on display were excellent. Looking at the roster and back room, I sensed a figurative focus and a strong selection of American painters including the likes of Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann and Mel Ramos.

Recently, Dalla Venezia moved with his growing family from Venice to Trieste, where he has quickly set up shop and is producing a new body of work that will debut in a solo show at Burkhard Eikelmann Gallery in late October, 2014. I recently caught up with the prolific painter, in the throes of the final touches and preparations for this exhibition.

David Molesky: How has the move away from Venice to Trieste been for you and your family? Do you still have strong ties to Venice?

David Dalla Venezia: We moved because of Gaia’s job, my partner and mother of my three sons. She is a publisher of children’s books and the publishing house is in Trieste. It was a hard decision and a demanding effort to move from Venice after living there for almost my entire life, but now that I have been here for a year, I can say that the quiet environment of Trieste has been helpful in concentrating me on this new body of work. Anyway, even if I left the house in Venice, my parents and friends still live and work there and I can join them in less than two hours.

How long have you been exhibiting with Burkhard? How many solo shows with him?

This is my third solo with Burkhard since 2001, the previous was in 2009, when I was just starting some changes that brought me to where I am now with my work.

I also took part in some group exhibitions and through him I created the design for a suite in the Arte Luise Kunsthotel in Berlin, where each room is a work by different artists.

Under what circumstances did you meet Burkhard?

It was around 1998, or maybe before. Burkhard wanted to visit the museum of Modern Art of Venice, Ca’ Pesaro, but the museum was closed that day.

Disappointed and on the way back to the vaporetto he noted the half-open door of my father’s frame shop in front of the museum. I was there modeling a sculpture in clay. He knocked, asked to have a look and we started to talk a little.

He was fascinated by the ambiance, surrounded by golden frames, paintings and sculptures; fortunately also by the work I was doing!

In Burkhard’s words, you “grew up at the knees of Picasso.” What were some of your memories of this?

Yes, my father lived and worked in Cannes for 18 years, where my sisters and I were born. In that time almost all of the important artists like Leger, Ozenfant, Sutherland and above all Picasso used to live on the Côtes d’Azur. My father used to bring me with him sometimes when he went to visit clients. A couple of times he brought me to Picasso’s castle. I was two years old so my memory is filtered by my father’s tales –Picasso was a myth for my father– so I have this strange sensation that Picasso is like a ‘granpa’ for me.

At this very moment, my father is producing frames for my show at Eikelmann’s.

My father also paints and has made art from a young age but has never exhibited.

Burkhard always said that we should organize something with my father and finally next year I will curate a solo exhibition of his work at the gallery –quite an oedipal challenge!

Are the toy still lives a new thing?

I started to use children’s toys as subject for still-lives around 2007. The first I made was Elmer the elephant. I have three little boys so in the last 12 years, I have been invaded by many kinds of toys –the oedipal challenge still rules in this sense– and living and playing with children has slowly widened the spectrum of the representable in my paintings.

I like to meditate on classical ‘genres’, in this case the still-life genre, trying to mix and reconsider them under my own point of view in relation with the past and my actual life. Toys, especially animal toys are both objects and a representation of a living being.

Now my children themselves have entered my paintings. Recently, in one of my larger compositions, I illustrate a change in the representation of relations between generations. Reconsidering the nude genre of a Caravaggio-explicit patchwork, I’ve placed them in Laocoon archetype. I put them and myself in a scene “playing” a fight that of course is not only a play. Mixing tradition and more recent pop cultures the subtitle is “Oh! You pretty things” from the song that David Bowie wrote in 1971 when he was waiting for his first son.

Also, you have a lot of paintings that seem to touch on the mythology of being a painter of pictures.

I’m a modern painter –modern in the sense that the intimate latin root of the word modus = measure implies– measuring the present time, modernity, always referring to the model of a very ancient tradition. Using these models, I try to find what is still recognizable of it in present times; ancestral mythological symbols that are still living in contemporary popular culture. From my point of view, greek models, Caravaggio and a pop song can serenely coexist. It’s like a theatrical scene in which different actors from all the times can suddenly appear.

How would you briefly describe your technique and process?

A part the experience in my father’s workshop, I was introduced to painting technique by my brother-in-law, the Chilean painter José Garcia Chibbaro who studied with Ernst Fuchs. It was a refined but laborious technique of superimposition of egg tempera and oil glazes. Then, I elaborated a personal synthesis using synthetic tempera rather than egg tempera to paint shadows and light in grisaille and glazing local colors over it with oil painting. In the last time, as a consequence of meeting Nerdrum and his entourage, I’m trying to simplify, and now I work only with oil and with a very limited palette. All the last paintings are made basically with white, ocher, red and a dark color I prepare myself instead of the black.

How do Titian and Tintoretto fit into your family tree? Would you say you are a Venetian French hybrid of sorts?

I’m Venetian as my family and my family name, but when we came back to Venice, I was as a stranger, an 8 year old French boy. I started to know and live the city and all its treasures with the eyes of a very young ‘tourist’. We lived nearby the Frari’s church, the location of Titian’s tomb and where you can see two of his more

important paintings. His work was imprinted in my mind very early! Just behind Frari’s is the Scuola San Rocco that contains dozens of Tintoretto’s paintings, but he never fascinated me as Titian… later I understood the reason I think: Tintoretto is a kind of predecessor of action painting.

I was young when I landed from the modern shores of Côtes d’Azur to the antique greenish waters of the venetian lagoons. Perhaps even more educational to me were the comics I read.

Rad, didn’t see that coming. Tell me about the comic influence.

It’s a part of my French influence. Franco-Belgium comics school is really important and considered an important expression of francophone culture and so I grew up reading Asterix & Obelix, Lucky Luke, Tintin and many others.

Unfortunately in Italy, comics were considered a ‘lowbrow’ culture so it was difficult to find something to read… But I received albums from France and later, I was into the generation of Metal Hurlant, Moebius, Druillet, Giger, etc. Of course also the Marvel world, Spiderman, The Fantastic Four, etc. and I was very proud to have all the Conan series!

I think there is a direct connection between great figurative painting tradition and comics that is a continuation and development of a similar immediate narrative and communication through images.

By the way, in 1987, inspired by the history of public art and Graffitti movement, I took my first steps in painting, realizing large murals by night on the temporary wooden structures used to enclose sites where renovation work is carried out on the streets of Venice. The attempt was to immediately communicate with people linking the tradition of painted facades with the young ‘pop’ global culture.

Is there anything you have read that has inspired your life as a creative person?

Many authors and books inspired me. I read a lot. I prefer essays in general, from aesthetics to philosophy and scientific themes. When I was a romantic young man, Huysman’s decadent novel À rebours impressed me and during my twenties Nietzsche was crucial. Regarding the question of being a figurative painter in a world dominated by contemporary Art reading Nerdrum’s On Kitsch (and then meeting him of course) was a clarifying experience and a confirmation of common intuitions. More recently the French writer Houellebecq fascinated me for his cynical and visionary perspective on the present and future. Finally, the landmark of these last years is certainly James Hillman’s An Essay on Pan, it really influenced my work and life; the link between mythology and psychology, ancient and present time, personal and social body, gave birth to some of the visions that nurture my last and future works.

Courtesy of Juxtapoz Art Magazine, november 2014

09 7

Oil on wood 25x20 2013

6 93

Oil on canvas 22x27 2014

still lives • nudes • visions

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Oil on canvas 22x33 2014

6 94

Oil on canvas 33x41 2014

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Oil on wood 25x20 2014

96 6

Oil on wood 25x20 2014

7 06

Oil on canvas 195x130 2014

7 07

Oil on canvas 195x130 2014

99 6

Oil on wood 25x20 2014

91 6

Oil on wood 35x25 2014

6 85

Oil on canvas 60x120 2014

97 6

Oil on wood 25x20 2014

98 6

Oil on wood 25x20 2014

7 04

Oil on canvas 38x46 2014

6 89

Oil on canvas 24x33 2014

92 6

Oil on wood 25x20 2014

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Oil on wood 25x20 2014

6 86

Oil on canvas 41x41 2014

Psychophagòmenos new paintings by

david dalla venezia october 2014 - jannuary 2015

Burkhard Eikelmann Galerie Dominikanerstraße 11 40545 Düsseldorf -Oberkassel Phone + 49 (0)211-17158920 Fax + 49 (0)211-17158929 www.burkhardeikelmann.com art@burkhardeikelmann.com Monday-Friday 11-19 · Saturday 10-14 Postanschrift: Cheruskerstraße 67a, 40545 Düsseldorf

© David Dalla Venezia & Burkhard Eikelmann

David Dalla Venezia He studied art and philosophy at the University of Venice.

From 1987 to 1989, in close collaboration with the Japanese artist Hiroshi Daikoku, he starts to paint making 12 large murals on the wooden palisades of restoration sites in the streets of Venice.

In 1989 his first personal exhibition took place at the Bac Art Studio Gallery in Venice. From 1990 to 1992 he lived and worked in Nice, where he took part in group exhibitions in the region (23rd Cagnes-sur-Mer International Painting Festival and the 4th International Contemporary Art Biennial, where he won first prize for painting). In 1992, on the occasion of his participation in the “Corale� exhibition, as curated by Andrea Pagnes at the Fondazione Bevilacqua-La Masa, he moved back to Venice and has lived and worked here since that time.

He has since continued to paint and exhibit in Italy and abroad, developing his style and perfecting his painting technique while always seeking a comparison with contemporary art.

In 2010 together with World Wide Kitsch, the association promoting the Kitsch movement and who refers to the Norwegian painter Odd Nerdrum, he organized and curated the Kitsch Biennale 2010 in Venice in Palazzo Cini at San Vio. This is the third personal exhibition at Burkhard Eikelmann Galerie, the two previous were in 2001 and 2009.

DAVID MOLESKY David Molesky is an american figurative painter and writer for Juxtapoz art magazine whose interests extend from Lowbrow and Pop Surrealism to Kitsch. www.davidmolesky.com

Front and inside cover, details from no.700 oil oncanvas cm.257x186 2014 (see central double page) Back cover no.705 oil oncanvas cm.200x160 2014

galerie burkhard eikelmann d端sseldorf