Press release. Text by Fabio Vito Lacertosa.

Luca Arboccò places painting at the heart of his inquiry—an inquiry that is both astute and passionate, approached simultaneously from the perspectives of a painter and a scholar.

If, as the Genoese artist believes, the entire history of painting is a history of the "gap"—the divide separating representation from its referent (whether physical or conceptual)—then it is equally true that this history, as an eternal variation on the theme of mimesis, ultimately becomes a sort of encyclopedia of anecdotes regarding "realism": that public challenge concerning the processes, techniques, and secrets involved in recreating the metaphysics of reality on canvas.

The works on display at Sala Dogana are the product of an exploration poised between the evocation of wonder and disillusionment, between tension and failure; they embody a dialectic of vision—the challenge of containing the visual field within the limits of a formal solution that is credible, acceptable, and convincing.