Curated by Giuseppe Pizzuto
Critical essay by Clara Amodeo
David de la Mano (1975, Salamanca, Spain) is one of the most important artists of the Urban Art movement. With a degree in Fine Art from the University of Salamanca and PhD studies in Public Art from the University of Valencia, de la Mano is a versatile artist who excels from drawing to sculpture. The artist has started his career in the early ‘90s creating Land Art projects, installations and sculptures in the public space, and since 2008 his attention has focused on mural paintings.
The artist experiments with different techniques among which acrylics, watercolours, ink and collage. Through a minimalist style, characterised by the monochromatic use of black, David de la Mano is able to create extremely poetic artworks, a symbolic reflection on humankind. The single anthropomorphic figures of the artist gather together and unite in an eternal and recurring movement; the individuals become the mass and vice versa, and they are driven by their dreams, ambitions, fears, vices, hopes, internal conflicts.
The solo show Latitude proposed a reflection on the concept viewed not only as a geographical term but as a state of the body. The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze defines the body by establishing a cartography of it, in which the latitude describes the states of the body’s force to exist, its power “to affect and be affected”. The body is defined by movement, a variation of its ability to act. In David de la Mano’s artworks the latitude is not a specific point anymore, but rather an indeterminate point between origin and destination, an intermediate state between active action and passive enduring. The characters of his paintings, as if moved by a common fate, tell the observer stories about journeys and exploration, narratives of odysseys, exiles, crossings and collective migrations.
The artist presented a new series of exclusive works for his exhibition at Wunderkammern, and before the show a mural workshop for students titled “Dentro al muro” was organised, it was curated by the artist in collaboration with the Instituto Cervantes of Milano.
CULTURAL PARTNERS
Cultural Office of the Spanish Embassy in Italy
IED – Istituto Europeo di Design
