However his approach to his predecessors is not at all that of a devotee, one of awe and docile reverence but rather that of a ruthless mind who subjugates and engenders all forms, pushing them to their furthest extremes, their vanishing point, where “a form of exhausted, at-the-limit beauty is impressed in them”. Whoever has some familiarity with the art landscape – no need to be a genteel connoisseur for that – will suddenly find striking similarities and powerful correspondances at stake between Samorì’s works and the most iconic figures of Renaissance, Baroque and Mannerism painting alike. Their skin flake off and their limbs are so much vividly reminiscent of open sores that one can’t help but pause to scrutinize their suffering, with painstaking attention, even with a hint of dark pleasure, unsure as to whether heal them or let them agonize slowly. They might bear an air of familiarity and déjà-vu at first sight, yet they reveal their real haunting nature at a closer inspection. If you don’t mind these, if you feel you need the full dose of his Catholic deathiness, look him up on the Google.Vacillating between life and death, his macabre, liminal creations exist as remnants of an act of violence, of so to speak Erostratism, namely, the morbid drive to prolong oneself in time and become immortal through outrageous and irreversible acts. So I’ve done my best to find works that are light on the deathiness. Still, even with all this creepy, I like what he does with the paint. He’s in it, and I don’t think he’s pepping up any time soon. He’s been very consistently painting deathy-death paintings for years – not decades, he’s only in his late 30’s, but still. And it’s not like there was a year or so where this guy got a little dark. I don’t know what it is exactly, but somehow this guy makes death just way too …deathy for me. I enjoy everything about these works except the death, and you know I loves me some death. I should title this post “The Least Macabre Paintings I Could Find by the Artist Nicola Samori.” I love his figurative works: the simplified compositions, the suggestions of movement and time, his paint application style, texture, articulation and decay – even his color palette, though admittedly it’s on the darker of the very dark Italian tastes.
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