PRESS RELEASE AUGUST 2013
Dario Ballantini 9 September – 9 October 2013 ArtMoorHouse, Moor House, 120 London Wall, Greater London, EC2Y 5ET Opening Hours : Mon - Fri (1pm - 5pm) or by appointment / Sat - Sun (by appointment)
Mondo. 2011 © Dario Ballantini
Celebrity Impersonator and Fine Artist Dario Ballantini returns for solo exhibition in London ArtMoorHouse is delighted to announce their upcoming exhibition of work by Italian celebrity impersonator and Fine Art painter Dario Ballantini. In his performed impersonations, Ballantini has become revered throughout the European continent for his unique ability to stretching the boundaries of figurative art – studying his subjects as though they are sitters. In the same way, from the subjects of his paintings the artist borrows their innermost expressions, laying bare and giving life to the characteristics latent beneath the anonymous, static faces which populate his canvases. Heralded by creatives and intellectuals throughout the Italian cultural scene as the ‘personification of eclecticism’, Ballantini has been recognised for his powerful expressiveness in both his primary art forms. Already present in the international art scene, he holds among his supporters and collectors historians, art critics, poets, song writers, film directors and actors – all of whom have been part of the artist's close entourage from the very beginning of his 'parallel' career as a celebrity impersonator. “Dario Ballantini’s paintings explore the unconsciousness, that part of ourselves that is hidden away, where awareness is banned. Night seeps into our thoughts and translates them into images of a sudden, dramatic perception…Our artist is perfectly aware of the rhythms that need to be painted on a canvas to bring up the labouring, the unease that the substance itself, when treated with deliberate excessive fury, can bring up and out of a background that offers no footholds but rather hotbeds of turmoil and grief, where the reds and the blacks, masterly used to bring out their dramatic intensity, will not let out any strokes or drips to soothe the whites, the blues and the yellows.” Luciano Caprile