Antonio Di Paola.
Demons of ice and swords of fire

Monsters, mythological creatures, geometric shapes, cosmic battles. The exhibition, curated by art historian Eva di Stefano, presents Antonio Di Paola, young artist from Palermo, who uses vivid, cheerful colors to combat the dark recesses of his mind.

Many of the titles of the sixteen large-scale works, draw on the world of fantasy but even the most evil of those monsters is transformed by Di Paola through vibrant colours and a multitude of signs and patterns, evoking a sense of inner chaos. The fearsome characters, equipped with claws, pincers, sharp teeth, electric tails, spines, and swords, are the fruit of Antonio’s sensitivity and overflowing imagination, as he seeks to control them through form and colour. “The story comes at the end,” Antonio explains. “First, the general idea of the composition arises in my head. By drawing, I transfer the linear structure to the sheet of paper, which only later, with the addition of colour, comes to life, and then the battle begins. Colour is a weapon of attack and defense.”

Antonio began drawing spontaneously at 17, while attending an accounting course. Now 24, his personal unease is mirrored in the anxiety of the so-called Generation Z of digital natives, fueled by the frenzy of video games and social media. His works are like mirrors that reflect the obsessions of his inner self, but they also evoke our fragility in the face of natural disasters, ongoing wars, and the epidemics of yesterday and today.

“The Scorpion of Malice”, “Salvobedort, the Dark Hunter”, “Alien City”, and “King Fire” are just some of the titles of the works on display: dragons, witches, vampires, and warriors rise to tear away the veil of anxiety. The more you look at, the more you enter a visionary universe, an interior and mental journey of transformation through precarious architecture, totems, and visual worlds within which the eye becomes lost.

“In the artist’s repertoire,” writes di Stefano in the critical essay in the catalog, “colours have their own symbolic value, and if blue is ice, red is fire, lava, the blood of the earth, while yellow is power, green is poison… The overall effect is playful, decorative, and at the same time disturbing. Even virtuosic, in the combined use of mixed techniques, including watercolor, acrylic, oil pastels, pigments, and ecoline.”