Massimiliano Galliani – De Visu

Catalog created for the exhibition of the same name, curated by Deianira Amico and in collaboration with the Arteam Cultural Association, at the Spazio Testoni Gallery in Bologna (21 January – 28 February 2017).

Following the traces painted by Massimiliano Galliani on the large canvas entitled The Roads of Time, the gaze gets lost in a labyrinth of signs. The first impression is of being faced with a geometric composition. Instead, it is the reproduction of a material detail of a painting: the cracks of the gaze of the Mona Lisa. Anyone who has referred to the work of Leonardo da Vinci – be it a writer, historian or artist – had to grapple with the ambiguity of the image and account for it with the means available. When the means change, even the mystery changes its appearance. To reveal the identity of Mona Lisa, in this case, it is a technological device: the screen of an iPad projects the virtual image of the canvas painted by Galliani, making the eyes of the Mona Lisa recognizable and recording at the same time, through a webcam, the visual reaction of the visitor at the moment of identification of the subject.

[taken from the text by Deianira Amico]