The Tiziana Di Caro gallery presents the fourth solo exhibition in its spaces by Stanislao Di Giugno (the previous being in 2008 with Alessandro Piangiamore, in 2010 and in 2016) on Thursday, April 29, 2021, from 3:00 to 7:00 p.m. The exhibition, entitled Trentuno fughe e alcuni dettagli [Thirty-one fugues and some details], includes works from 2020 and 2021. 

Stanislao Di Giugno’s work has been focusing almost exclusively on painting starting around 2014. Before that, his production had been more eclectic, including, in addition to painting, sculpture (which he still performs to a lesser extent), collage and installation. The investigation of reality replaces its pure representation, and what runs through and typifies all of his production, with relentless coherence, is the focus on space. Over time, Stanislao Di Giugno has implemented a drastic reduction of elements, focusing on painting and arriving at a dichotomous balance where the plastic sense of matter is offset by the abstraction of form.

Trentuno fughe e alcuni dettagli is a group of pieces created over a month during one of the confinement periods which we have all been experiencing lately. The research and work dimensions have thus represented for Di Giugno the place where to escape, the arrival in another reality, one that is different, manageable and changeable.

Every day he committed to the production of a small work. Starting in the morning with the framing and preparation of the canvas followed by the actual painting, the work was finished by the evening. The following day he would produce a new one, the same in size as the one from the previous day, following exactly the same procedure. And the day after he would do the same thing again, and so on every day until he finished a series of 27 paintings 40 x 30 cm in size.

However, the work on each picture did not finish with the end of the day: in fact, in addition to starting new ones, Di Giugno would go back to the works he had already painted, modifying them through new layers of color, which would overlap but never completely, in a sort of ritual that saw him insist on size in relation to space, and which at the same time, as a constant and daily practice, also extended over time. Painting allows this freedom: to modify, alter, manipulate the form, change one’s mind or simply the compositional space, decide that a painting is not finished, that it could be concluded but also not, and thus continue working on it.

As in a musical “fugue”, Stanislao Di Giugno analyzes a theme, an item that is reiterated several times, following an expressive path which unfolds in secondary themes that are repeated and developed through a logical musical route.

To the dark shades prevailing in the artist’s previous works, other colors are added that are sometimes very bright, such as yellow, pink, green, red. From the layering process these colors transpire, at times simply in very thin segments, like slits of light in space. Day after day the works change, the space of the canvas is transformed: Di Giugno does not implement erasures, but overlaps. What was painted earlier is still on the canvas but behind newer brushstrokes. The overlapping of layers does not only entail a chromatic variation, but also the physical structure of the work, because adding color also increases the breadth of the pictorial surface.

A finished painting is like a temporal condensate made up of layers of times and moods, even very different and discordant, which find a reason to coexist in space.

The exhibition Trentuno fughe e alcuni dettagli (Thirty-one fugues and some details) is accompanied by a text by Davide Ferri

Stanislao Di Giugno was born in 1969 in Roma, where he lives and works. Most important exhibitions: Cinque mostre-Vision(s) (2017), curated by Ilaria Gianni, American Academy in Rome (Italy), There is no place like home (2016-2014) Roma (Italy), Fold (2015), Sammlung Lenikus, Wien (Austria), La scrittura degli echi (2015) a project by NERO, In the frame of The Independent. MAXXI, Roma, Èdra. Connecting Landscapes (2014), curated by Carmen Stolfi for Untitled Association, American Academy plus other locations, Roma (Italy), Re‐generation (2012), curated by Maria Alicata and Ilaria Gianni, Macro Museum, Roma (Italy), Never talk to strangers (2011), Edel Assanti Gallery, Londra (UK), When in Rome (2011), curated by Luca Lo Pinto for Depart Foundation, Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Hammer Museum and Laxart, Los Angeles (USA), La Danse Macabre (2010), Nomas Foundation, Roma (Italy), Zweck Gemein Schafft (2009), curated by ArtAtWork, MICAMOCA, Berlin (Germany), Give time your time / Dai tempo al tempo (2008), Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Guarene, Torino (Italy), Beware of the Wolf (2008), curated by Lorenzo Benedetti and Lexi Eberspacher, American Academy, Roma (Italy). Art Omi. International Artists Residency (2005), New York (USA). Sponsor DENA FOUNDATION FOR CONTEMPORARY ART, Parigi (Francia). Since 2014 he is member of the collective “There is no place like home”, whose mission is the development of the knowledge of contemporary art, through exhibitions organized in unconventional places.