Massimo Giannoni: VOLUMI

Giannoni works in oil, thickly rendered and worked into turbid, glutinous descriptions of the books, architecture, and objects of his world. His paint is clotted and sticky, richly applied and slathered on to make an impasto of sensuous immediacy. The handling of the brush is deft and assertive, which makes for a lively, agitated surface or ‘facture’. Colour ranges across the spectrum – his is not a monochromatic palette, despite sometimes-shadowy interiors. Illumination is by a diffuse light, that subtly articulates and discloses each mis-en-scene, establishing a hermetic and numinous atmosphere that verges on the sacred.

These images suggest the scholarship and enlightenment that arises from sites of study and revelation. They are, however, entirely unpopulated; the client is absent; the people have left or have not yet arrived. What we see is a resource untapped, ignored or possibly abandoned. Melancholy attaches itself to empty spaces. Nevertheless, we sense a presence from the voices of the books themselves – a constant murmuring, an undertow of discourse which is intrinsic to the learned object.

We can choose to experience these pictures as depictions of cultural decay or, on the other hand, as a hard-won inheritance ripe for exploration. In a post-modern world that devalues and discards the intellectual achievements of its past, Giannoni’s paintings invite us to take up the book, view the museum and immerse ourselves in the life of the mind, wherever it may lead us.