[EN]
Working within figurative expressionism painting, I develop images that move between archetype and personal mythology.
My research moves within a zone of suspension, where existence appears tethered to a thin thread and life constantly dialogues with the ephemeral. I consider myself a witness to pre-existing entities: the animalistic, fantastical, nonsensical, and grotesque characters that populate my work are fragments of my uncommunicability, hidden behind a curtain or locked within mental boxes. They burst onto the canvas to reclaim their own stage, driven by an urgency to speak and to be felt. Their rowdy and furious nature contrasts with the colors they cloak themselves in. Immersed in noisy and chaotic battlefields, the subject's self-judgment and self-determination generate a physical conflict. In this space, these figures do not respond to primary needs, but to violent and sudden emotional impulses, caught in an eternal game of punishment and submission.
I find that the act of painting takes on a shamanic value: it acts as a mediator between the visible world and the shadows of the unconscious. Every work is therefore an apotropaic device, an archaic ritual translated into contemporary signs, essential for ensuring psychic survival. Painting is a virtual hunt aimed at isolating the inner threat -the monster, the grief, the beast- to transform it into a tangible and therefore governable simulacrum. My figures reject reassuring decoration and quiet stillness; they reject their own frail nature and instead seek a muscular tension capable of challenging darkness and disappearance, co-opting art into the tools of power and defense necessary for those who grant no quarter to resignation.
My name is Umberto Dell’Aica. I am a self-taught painter and have been painting since childhood. My father is my shaman painter. I live and work in Milan.