Nicola Ghirardelli (1994, Como, Italy. Lives and works between Milan and Tuscany) graduated in Painting from Brera Fine Arts Academy in 2020. His work emerges from the fascination for images generated by the world and the need to repeat them, fix them in a form. Through the cast, a negative withdrawal, materialisation of the void surrounding the object, the world is transformed into a mould. The representation of the Universe occurs through the multiplication of its objects, which are housed in structures that aggregate these forms, placing cultural and natural images on the same level. Drawing from various mythologies, like history of art and iconology, isolating elements, and making their signs appear in incomplete forms, the artist makes use of symbols that seem to flow from our collective memory, charged with charm typical of dissolved reminiscences, which come back loud, unexpected. The sterile symbols (because we have forgotten their original meaning) are taken with a violent act of appropriation and relocated into complex trophies, resulting in morphologies that dissipate energy in a dynamic momentum, in search for a new centre of gravity, an order different from the initial one.
Between September 2020 and February 2021, he participated in “L’armonia” residency program by Manifattura Tabacchi in Florence, curated by Sergio Risaliti. He worked as assistant to the artist Giulia Cenci in 2022, joining the production of the artworks on view at the 59° Venice Biennale, “The Milk of Dreams”. The artist was included in many group shows such as: “Break in. Temporal displacement”, curated by Arnold Braho, The Address, Brescia, Italy (2022); “Instructions to Light-Keepers”, curated by Arnold Braho and Stefano De Gregori, Sept Showroom, Milan, Italy (2021); “Les Danses Nocturnes”, curated by EastContemporary, Spread Museum, Entrevaux, France (2021); “Ardere, Ardere, Ardere, Ardere”, curated by Arnold Braho and Maddalena Pippa, Verona, Italy (2021); “L’armonia”, curated by Sergio Risaliti, Manifattura Tabacchi, Florence, Italy (2020); “ZUCKERBUNKER”, curated by Yuma Burgess, Sol Bailey Barker, Helen Neven, Hyph4e. net (online exhibition) (2020).
