Giovanni Blanco's Trompe l'Œil at Nuova Galleria Morone in Milan

At Nuova Galleria Morone in Milan, artist Giovanni Blanco (born 1980 in Ragusa, lives in Modica) presents a solo exhibition featuring a large trompe l'œil painting of an empty gray bookshelf on the back wall, measuring 2.5 by 2 meters. The work, an oil on canvas, realistically depicts shadows cast by side light from the street-facing window and LED ceiling lights. Curator Gabriele Salvaterra notes that painting shadows is a constant in Italian art from Leonardo to Tiepolo and Caravaggio. The exhibition also includes thirteen acrylic works in 57x41cm format, all in black and white, hung on other walls. Blanco's subjects are autobiographical and reflective: a nude, a vase of flowers, a memento mori set in his kitchen (with a refrigerator in the background), his fetish animal the barn owl (with which he identifies), a chair, a portrait of his mother, an armless crucifix, and the facade of a Sicilian unfinished building. Blanco studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna under Massimo Pulini, distancing himself from the school of Piero Guccione. His technique reproduces mechanical reproductions in detail, including imperfections like smudges, scratches, and toner inconsistencies. The empty bookshelf serves as an ouroboros, the source and destination of the images that animate the walls.