DOMENICO D’OORA

D’Oora was born in London in 1953. In 1976 he graduated in Painting at Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera with Guido Ballo as his teacher. At the Academy he attended lessons in “Gestalt psychology” and “Art and cybernetics” held by Cesare Musatti and Silvio Ceccato; at the same time he attended classes in “Theoretical philosophy” taught by Enzo Paci at Università Statale in Milan. Early in his career, in the late ‘70s, Domenico D’Oora developed a series of works called “Deconstruction of verbal-visual language – The mind space”. His artistic research, characterized by the use of colour and materials in a perceptive way, began in the second half of the ‘80s. Among others, Elena Pontiggia, who would include two solo shows of him into the catalogue, and Vincenzo Accame wrote some critical essays about D’Oora’s work during these years. His artistic production focuses on the work’s physical presence and on the usage of colour as a research guide, becoming fundamental elements of his works. The surface – painting place – from simple bidimensional space acquires its own tridimensionality. During these first years of his career there was a comparison with Dangelo and Staccioli’s artworks, as the art critic Francesco Poli reported on Giornale dell’Arte in 1991. The idea of space and colour was investigated by D’Oora also in the ideal dialogue with another lacustrine artist, as Fabrizio Rovesti wrote in his critical essay “D’Oora and the Calderara Collection” in 1991. Two years later, in 1993, a solo show was organized in Venice by Alberto Veca, who presented the artist with the essay “About the object” and contributed to the inclusion of D’Oora’s original path of analysis and research into the non-objective art world. In that period the surface of his artworks was never characterized by a smooth and monochrome colour, although his painting is made of monochromes, but it was a full-bodied and materical mixture with a succession of overlapped glazes that helped to give a volumetric plasticity to the bidimensionality of the artistic surface itself. Materiality and stratification are two very important concepts for the artist, who examines their possibilities not only on the artwork’s front but also on its edge, developing a research about materials and physicality of his work, made with particular angles that compose the frame. D’Oora – from the beginnings of his works with boards, slabs and stainless steel balls matched – doesn’t consider the surface and the frame’s volume only as a support but as a milestone of his painting. Starting from 2000s he realized monochrome surfaces by overlapping several glazes and outlining the work with vertical lines at lateral edges, with also a 45° flared frame to define the space. In this technical solution, the painting wraps the frame’s angle producing a very strong monolithic painting-sculpture effect to bring out the artwork from the wall where it’s located. In that period (2003) a D’Oora’s solo show named “Painting at present” was hosted at Cavenaghi Art Gallery in Milan, accompanied by a catalogue with text by Rachele Ferrario. The next exhibition, “Monochrome” (2008), would be introduced by Angela Madesani. The research about stratification technique continued during the following years; the wood frame from support became structure, shown in its strong “nakedness” in contrast with the ethereal painted surface of the work. In the recent years the structural support gets an exclusive nature defined by colours and different materials overlapped: transparent plexiglass and coloured plastic materials are added on the MDF, with an accumulation effect in which the identity of each material is related to the previous/next with a rhythmic cadence, almost as if to create a sound effect into the space. The different materic scans of the “object”-structure are directly connected with the linear modulations of the artwork’s surface, where the colour, as an object, becomes material, thus creating a dialectical composition, a body of the artwork of great consistency and fascination. Moreover, this effect is reinforced by the reversed truncated pyramid made with the wood structure ending on the surface with a really bold and powerful pictorial mixture that seems to float into the space thanks to its visual lightness, even if firmly anchored to the underlying materic layering. D’Oora frequently collaborates with exhibition galleries both in Italy and in Germany and Switzerland. In 2008 the Lazerits Gallery of Zurigo organised his solo show “Absolute Farbe” curated by G. Blumer Kamp; then the artist took part in some group shows, such as “Bonfanti, Castellani, Dorazio, D’Oora, Di Robilant, werke auf papier” and “Italienische Kunst von 1965: Capogrossi, Dorazio D’Oora, Matino” in 2007; in 2012 he had his second solo show at the Gallery. Again in Switzerland D’Oora collaborated with Folini Gallery of Chiasso organising the two solo shows “Opere” curated by Claudio Cerritelli in 2005 and “Painting Now” by Marco Meneguzzo in 2012. Among his most recent exhibitions in Italy there are “D’Oora, New Paintings” (2014) curated by Giorgio Bonomi at Il Milione Gallery in Milan, his solo show “Emerging in color field” (2015) at Poliart Contemporary in Milan, his site-specific installation with oversized paintings made at Bocconi Art Gallery at Grafton Building in Milan (2011-2012). D’Oora is carrying on an important collaboration in Germany with Appel Gallery of Frankfurt: in 2014 Appel Gallery organised his solo show “D’Oora Neue Bilder”, after the presentation, in 2009, of his solo show “Absolute Farbe” by Martin Engler, curator of the Contemporary Art Collection of the Städel-Museum in Frankfurt. Then the artist, always represented by Appel Gallery, regularly attended Art Karlsruhe from 2012 to 2015, while his personal stand was shown at Arte Fiera of Bologna in 2012. The year before (2011), in the same city and with the same gallery, he had participated to a group show with artworks by Max Cole, Angelika Gilberg, Kuno Gonschior, Marcia Hafif and Jerry Zeniuk. Moreover, in 2015 Appel Gallery organised another exhibition at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. D’Oora isn’t just an interesting painter; he also wrote critical essays about the works of such artists as: Alberto Burri, Dadamaino, Gino De Dominicis, Piero Dorazio, Paolo Gioli, Hans Hartung, Achille Perilli, Vittorio Matino, Sandro Martini, Italo Valenti.