Diego Gravinese
Angelina Mortarotti
On the last Friday of the month in Buenos Aires, Argentina, one of the art districts hosts an event called "Gallery Nights." The event is one of a few throughout the city where maps are distributed to mark participating art spaces, and doors stay open late. Gallery goers pick up champagne glasses, and take them to the streets as they stroll to the next destination or celebration of art. The event is akin to New York galleries’ opening receptions, only with later hours, a slightly different crowd, and a complimentary bus and special route to take visitors to the next street of galleries. During this stroll on the last Friday of November 2005, I found myself in Zavaleta Lab, awed by the paintings by Diego Gravinese.
Gravinese paints photorealist paintings in the tradition of Richard Estes. However, unlike Estes’ urban landscapes, the photos Gravinese reproduces are not carefully executed photographic works, but rather snapshots of personal moments. In many instances the harshness of the flash can be felt through the translation of the medium, confirming perceptions of the "quality" and time devotion given to each frame. The audience assumes the moments have been captured on a whim, especially since subjects (seemingly) rarely pose or even look at the camera while the photograph is taken.
Gravinese does not simply recreate these snapshots, but works with a process of editing and juxtaposing incongruent images to form a grander frame. Sometimes two or more separate paintings are created on a single plane yielding a new relationship. In other instances canvases are hung touching to form a single unit. And to add further separation from the tradition of photo-realist painting, large fields of color are sometimes added back into the frame blocking the viewer (turned voyeur) satisfaction of seeing the photograph in its original state.
What makes Gravinese’s work especially enticing though, once it is viewed beyond the technical skill, is the subject matter. In one painting three young women sit casually on a sofa; two in their underwear and the third nude. None is paying any particular attention to the next. To the right, another portrait broken from the first frame by thick white border, is another young woman, nude, holding a digital camera. By the way she looks at the back of the camera, we guess that she is reviewing the shot just snapped; perhaps a photo of herself taken in the mirror. This sort of casual exploration of burgeoning sexuality is subtly present throughout the paintings of the exhibition.
Clothing and (un)dressing is repeated iconography found in the photos depicted, and there is a sense of learning and coming of age associated with this depiction. In other moments, where we see one young woman assist another in the application of eye make-up, or in El Elastico a young girl helps another with the back hook of her bra, a sense of collective rites of passage come across. Another young girl takes off her shirt while sitting messy-haired on a bed and carefully holding a cigarette, in Daydreamer. She is juxtaposed with a scene of sleeping dolls. Her action mimics the dolls as she looks down; her eyes too, appear closed. The contradictions of child’s toy (doll) and adult’s toy (cigarette) creates an unease because of the ambiguity of the girl’s age.
Each assemblage of paintings in fact results in a quiet discomfort as the various factors are put into play and the paintings become effectively chilling yet nostalgic simultaneously. It is through careful authoring and editing, that Gravinese reveals the age and activity of exploration with his snapshot-paintings.
