We are pleased to announce an exhibition of recent works by Italian painter Gianluca Di Pasquale in our gallery space in Lugano.

Gianluca Di Pasquale is known for his landscapes composed almost entirely by figures, painted with precise brush strokes inside a large white space. The sizes, gestures and relationships between the figures create the landscape in our imagination. Apart from the people, a few trees, some architectural details, we see only white space. Yet the whiteness becomes a park, a mountain, a square or a street. The scenes are those of our leisure time: lawns, trails, urban squares, beaches; often places of encounter and mediation between nature and civilization, where people aggregate, creating rhythms and constellations dictated by the shape of the landscape. Di Pasquale uses fluid brushstrokes to paint figures, dresses and jackets, windbreakers and bathing suits, that become part of the landscape, a game of signs and colors. A few precise strokes create figures and gestures, evoking situations.

He says: “I usually begin with a photograph, and as I transfer it into painting there is a sort of substraction of the landscape. This operation becomes painting in itself; the echo of the landscape remains, a sort of ghost whose presence is very strong in my paintings. The white canvas becomes the scene in which the figures orbit, captured in the banality of their everyday gestures. They seem to be engaged in a sort of cosmic soliloquy. At the same time they are the protagonists of this non-existent landscape. The figures create the space. In my pictures painting, in its absence, becomes silence, which at the same time could be a scream, because it is strong, stronger than the painting itself. White is the sum of all colors, it is light, and therefore it refers to a metaphysical component, an idea of the infinite that amazes but also frightens us, while the painting, in its presence, outlining landscapes and people, offers a reassuring reference to reality, thus restoring a precarious equilibrium.”

Gianluca Di Pasquale was born in Rome in 1971 and lives in Milan. He studied painting at the Academy of Rome and for one year at the Academy of Granada in Spain. His first show was in 1999 at Tatra Gallery, Bratislava. He exhibited nationally and internationally in Prima Parete - Galleria S. Fedele, Milano (1999); Atelier - Galleria di Arte Moderna, Roma (2000); Sommerausstellung Galerie Binz & Krämer Köln (2003); VI Convocatoria Internacional de Jóvenes Artistas, Galería Luis Adelantado, Valencia, Spain (2004); Jeux Divers, Museum Géo-Charles, Echirolles, France (2005); KTF Gallery the Orange, Seoul, Korea (2008); No more than a point of view, Prague Biennale 4 (2009); Appunti di Pittura, ARCA, Catanzaro (2011) ; Visible/Invisible, Italian Expo Pavillion, Shanghai (2012); Travelogue, Art Incubator, Fondazione Capri (2012); La Logica del Tornasole, CARS, Omegna (2013); Possibilità di un'isola, via Carlo Farini 68, Milano (2014); Don't shoot the painter. Paintings from the UBS Art Collection, Galleria D'Arte Moderna, Milano (2015). Main solo shows took place at Tatra Gallery di Bratislava (1999); Associazione Culturale Futuro, Roma (2003); Galerie Binz&Krämer, Köln (2005); Galleria Monica De Cardenas, Milano and Zuoz (2006, 2011, 2014). His works are in important private and public collections, including the Unicredit, Swiss Re and UBS Art collections.