SHANGHAI.- Almine Rech Shanghai is presenting Offset Sunset, Italian artist Gioele Amaro’s first solo show at the gallery. His work was previously shown in the group exhibition Water Always Moves On at the Brussels gallery in 2020.

A master of the art of synthesis, Amaro combines, transforms, and blurs the boundaries to construct a dialogue between traditional mediums (painting, photography, drawing) and new technologies. His work is digitally painted, then printed on canvas. He then meticulously reworks each canvas, applying several layers of varnish. By bringing his own touch to this original technique, Amaro shifts figurative representation into the abstract and captures the essence of the subject from real life.

For this new show, Amaro has painted horizons, or, rather, the spirit of the horizon as seen from a window, an airplane window, or even through a smartphone screen.

Like his previous series DigitalDust, in which he revisited historical masterpieces, Amaro tends to reduce these stolen moments to the simplest particle of their own colors. However, in this series, he does not call on collective memory, but appeals to our subconscious and individual history. Like screenshots of our emotions, Amaro’s paintings seem to plumb our souls, seeking the memory of a meaningful moment or a magical interval.

Gioele Amaro’s paintings are allegorical representations of passing time. With these vanities 3.0, he chooses to depict a kind of fragility and grace, inviting us on a poetic journey of a very different nature.

With his control of digital painting, Amaro has captured and materialized the emotion of an instant, while defying digital art skeptics. Gioele Amaro is an Italian painter born in 1986. He lives and works in Milan and Paris.

— Milena Oldfield, researcher at Almine Rech