SPLEEN 2019

Sergio Mario Illuminato made this large painting called Spleen, and what hits me first is that muted, almost melancholic palette. It’s like the painting itself is breathing with a kind of heavy atmosphere. I imagine Illuminato building up those layers, scraping back, maybe adding more, searching for that figure to emerge from the ground. Look at how that central figure seems to be both there and not there, solid yet dissolving back into the background. You know? Like a memory, or a feeling that’s hard to pin down. That ghostly figure, kneeling, almost swallowed by the dark ground! I wonder if it is about vulnerability. The texture is great: all those scratched lines create a real sense of movement and unrest, as if the artist is working through something. The artist is in a kind of conversation with other painters across time, all trying to capture something elusive, some kind of truth, in paint.