“In Balliano there is the awareness of a refusal of a strictly rationalist interpretation of painting, and in this detachment, one understands the artist’s distance from the belief in the principles of literalness typical of the grammar of abstract modernism of the 20th century. It is the genetic matrix of the artist’s painting that searches for three-dimensional allusions, through irregularities, multiple color layering and strata of heterogeneous materials. Thus, two syntactic elements dominate his pictorial action: the formal approach and its dissolution, the canon of the geometric model and its negation, like a heresy that ends the possibility of reaching a definitive dogma every time. […] The artist’s works are an attempt at mediating with entropy that determines every area of human and natural experience. Each piece opens to variable perceptual scenarios, alternating between predefined forms and their imperfections, clear surfaces and abrasions. The works resulting from this evolution become a synthesis of tactile possibilities and architectural references, demonstrating how non-figurative painting does not escape the elaboration of the real but is the result of a more intense interaction with its data.”
The Game and the Totality of Existence
Luigi Fassi, 2018
“And so the state of anxiety that derives from the awareness of his own freedom, the subtle feeling of envy felt for the instinctive gesture (a synonym of purity on which much could be said) and the desire to express a form of dissent even within his own visual construction all come together in a rigorous image; an image that rests soundly on a predetermined structure to give rise to a difficult balancing act where the precision of the graphic composition is under the constant threat of a controlled explosion of chaos.”
A Carefully Weighed Sabotage
Michele Robecchi, 2022
“As with emanations across time and space and through birthing galaxies or from abandoned archaeological ruins, we can know almost nothing of them beyond their edges but that they continue. They might be imagined as diagrams of gravity waves from the early Universe. Such histories as drafted by astrophysicists are so distant and large and speculative as to be abstractions. And although Balliano's paintings might prosaically resemble the emergence of order from chaos in the Universe’s fundament by the primigenial collision of supermassive black holes, they are of themselves and are crafted by the artist alone. […] Davide Balliano is a summoner. He recombines simple substances into complicated images. His inquisitions are deft and increasingly focused. There are boundaries that cannot be seen past, but he calls through long time and space to illuminate those borders.”
Event Horizon
Noah Dillon, 2023
Davide Balliano (Turin, IT 1983) lives and works in New York.
Recent solo exhibitions include Tina Kim Gallery, New York (2026, 2023, 2021, 2019, 2017),Cardi Gallery, Milan (2024, 2022), Museo Novecento, Florence (2019), Dirimart Gallery, Istanbul (2019), Bottega Veneta Maison, New York (2018), Marca Museum, Catanzaro (2018), 39 Great Jones, New York (2018), Luce Gallery, Torino (2017 / 2015), Timothy Taylor Gallery, London (2015), Room East, New York (2014), Galerie Rolando Anselmi, Berlin (2013), Michel Rein Gallery, Paris (2013) and Location One, New York (2011). His work has been included in group exhibitions at Assembly, Monticello NY (2024), Magazzino Italian Art, Cold Spring NY (2020), Tina Kim Gallery, New York (2019), David Zwirner Gallery, New York (2015), Sean Kelly Gallery, New York (2014, 2010), Madre Museum, Naples (2012), the Quadrilateral Biennial in Rijeka, Croatia (2011), The Watermill Centre, New York (2011, 2009), MoMA PS1, New York and the Espai d’Art Contemporani de Castelló, Castellón (all 2010).
His work is represented by: