Addamian Christmas. To see the stars again …

The monumental site-specific triptych by Natale Addamiano entitled “A riveder le stelle …” is the undisputed protagonist of the solo exhibition presented at the Dep Art Gallery in Milan from 7 June to 25 September 2021.
Next to it, the review curated by Federico Sardella proposes a series of recent works part of the “Starry skies” cycle, placing the accent on a painting that is predominantly related to the dark and the night, but which is equally rich in glows and luminous traces.

In all the works on display, from the large triptych conceived specifically for the gallery spaces, to the works of smaller dimensions and small cards, it is clear that the space of painting , although constrained within the limits of the support, it tends to expand beyond its borders. A space that responds to the artist's need to relate to nature, which has always been understood as an inexhaustible source of inspiration and a pretext for painting, made profound by the many drafts, by the countless pictorial traces that make it up and that allow the user to be kidnapped, to get lost in it.

The works of Natale Addamiano, intimate and contemplative, lead towards a path of light and possibilities after darkness, to the point of allowing us to “see the stars again …” with an explicit reference to Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, who in the last verse of Hell with Virgil finds himself contemplating the starry sky again. The title of the exhibition highlights this need for the absolute and the infinite that animates the artist and that leads him to measure himself, day after day, with his inexhaustible desire to paint, to interrogate painting and to always find new stimuli, spaces and possibility.

Natale Addamiano begins in 2010 to give life to the nucleus of paintings “Starry skies”, a trend that continues with such vitality as to confirm the coherence of a path in which painting is always the protagonist and its practice has never failed. Not surprisingly, the works present in the exhibition at the Dep Art Gallery, although apparently united by a predominance of shades attributable to the range of blacks, instead suggest the participation of other colors that animate and enliven the painted surfaces. Their intensity is felt in these skies, between the stars and the nebulae, they manifest themselves as if they were presences, poised between the materiality of painting and memory, between the intimacy of color and the possibility of attracting and absorbing, which the color itself foresees.

The exhibition is accompanied by a bilingual catalog (Italian and English) published by Dep Art, with the images of the exhibition, reproductions of all the works on display, a conversation between Natale Addamiano and Federico Sardella and updated bio-bibliographic apparatuses.