Davide Cantoni

…And here’s issue number two!

The classic rule dictates that whether you are going on Atkins, quitting smoking, or making a daily habit of practicing your Swahili, the first three days are always the hardest. I like to think that once I have three of these posts out of the way, that this blogging thing will become a regular habit of mine. Here’s to hoping, right? It must be said, though, that with this post, the entire process was smooth as butter!

I was at the opening of Towing the Line, Drawing Space: 40 Contemporary Dutch Artists Defining the Moment in Holland at the WhiteBox Gallery, where our friend Hans Broek was one of the featured artists. I was just about to leave, when Hans swooped in and insisted I meet a friend of his, Davide Cantoni (who is not Dutch). I had been shown his work before, and was extremely fond of it (still am, thanks for asking!). After a chat that lasted all of about 45 seconds or so, I cheerily skipped out into the shitshow that is Little Italy during the Feast of San Gennarro, business card in tow. Or hand. Or whatever. (One lady in the gallery insisted the calzones are to die for. I’ll have to take her word for it.)

Fast forward several weeks, and I am securing my noble steed in front of a schmancy (read: has an elevator!) DUMBO studio building on Jay Street, right next to the East River. Davide, smartly bespectacled elegantly yet casually dressed in the usual manner of a European expat artist (this manner, for whatever reason always seems to involve hiking boots. But I digress.), leads me inside his gigantic studio, which he shares with two other artists. I immediately notice the windows which drench the back of the room in sunlight (pay attention, this is important!).


I unload my supplies, and we decide to initiate this highly anticipated event by breaking out the peace pipe ie. ciggies. But we hit a snag: the lighter is nowhere to be found! Undaunted, Davide whips out his ginormous magnifying glass, and dashes over to the window. With a strong sun and a trained, steady hand, the cigarette is lit in seconds. This was done in a manner so deft and suave that I’m semi-convinced he planned this beforehand to impress Ms. Interviewer. Yours truly was impressed (patience! This IS going somewhere!). Having all the necessary accouterments, we sat down and began…


The first time I looked at Davide’s work on his website, I seriously thought for a moment that my monitor had conked out—the paintings were so pale and difficult to see. Closer inspection, however, shows that they are hardly monochromatic, nor do they appear whitewashed. Using milky, reflective mica-based paints, he recreates photographs, mostly from the New York Times, onto canvases that upon entering the room appear blank. Remarkably, with a change in the viewer’s position they reveal themselves.
Meeting, Afghanistan - 2007

Davide initially began working with these materials while attending the Royal College in London, where he first did “massage” and “tongue” paintings which were kissed and licked, leaving an impression of the gestures in the paint. As time went on the paintings developed into works with a more definitive subject matter and serious tone. From the most discernible angle, they read like photographs with the brightness Photoshopped to the max, yet one can only fully chart the painting’s topography with constant movement, looking at it from above and below and both sides, with perhaps a bit of squinting and head-tilting.
Prison, Malawi - 2006

This is precisely the effect Davide was looking for, something which "…demanded to be seen and experienced, to counteract the fact that nearly everything we see is digital, or a reproduction. Everyone knows what the Mona Lisa looks like, but a very small percentage has actually seen it. I wanted seeing this painting to include the element of time. It may seem like a dumb thing to say, but you cannot just have a glimpse. They need to be studied, kind of discovered."
Road Block, Kenya - 2007

It was this kind of reasoning that also led Davide to use photographs from the New York Times depicting people in areas of conflict and poverty: “The idea that millions of people have seen these images, and these are real people, it's not as though I invented them. They're miserable. There is a child with a machine gun, there's people in prison, a child who has gone blind, this guy has set his truck on fire, there's a man in a corner with his hands tied. I mean, it's real. It would be nice if my work could cause people to stop and think ‘Wow, these people exist. I saw it in the newspaper and yet I never thought about it.’” About his previous stint with massage paintings, Davide observes that “kissing is a loving, involved act. In the early 90’s “painting” was dead (again), but I was kissing it back to life.” The same is happening here—photos of events forgotten the same day they were seen are now fully resurrected, with a presence much more imposing than in their past lives.

Davide has also translated these photographs into drawings using a technique that is uniquely his own. After tracing the photo onto paper, he uses a magnifying glass and little ray o’ sunshine to burn the lines of the drawing (did I not admonish patience?), giving them a fascinating raw effect as well as new dimensions of meaning.
Blind Afghan Child - 2008

Mother Child, Darfur - 2007

He notes that his burnt drawings "mimic the photographic process. The paintings need light to be seen, they produce a negative and positive image. The drawings are paper exposed to light. This reintroduces the old debate: ‘Is painting dead now that we have photography?’”
The process of burning also mirrors the violence and unpredictability of what is happening in the photographs themselves. “You're never quite sure what is going to catch fire and what isn't. It is kind of an act of random violence.” This process is also appropriate to Davide’s political message, that viewers should be aware, and never forget these pictures, the literal “burning of an image into your mind.”
Tyres - 2002

Child Soldiers, Sierra Leone - 2004

Rescue, New Orleans - 2005

(Also, I cannot help but recall how Monet used only to paint certain views and landscapes during certain times of the day, always with the same weather conditions. It’s interesting and unusual to see how a contemporary artist literally needs sun in order to complete his work!)
Goma Refugees - 2007

Flood, Indonesia - 2006

Fighter, Afghanistan - 2007

Having spent the first thirteen years of his life in Milan, Italy, Davide had immense exposure to important historical art from a very young age, which now plays an important role in his work. He is particularly drawn to photographs that draw on art-historical references. “Some are purely visual. There was a photo of these women in Kosovo, about six or seven years ago, surrounding the body of the son of one of these women. They were wearing veils, and the light was coming through… it was a Vermeer painting, this photograph. It was incredible! It went beyond purely documentary photography.” He describes another photo, one of a woman with her toddler in an Iraqi refugee camp as “the Madonna and Child of 2008”.
Mother Child, Iraq - 2008

Davide’s work is not all doom and gloom, however. To occasionally escape the subject matter, Davide makes paintings and drawings of things like the moon and the sun, models, as well as more placid scenes from the Times.
Luna - 2007

New Delhi - 2007

Since we were on the topic of art historical references, I must say that the reclined pose and the direct look of "Katie" reminds me of Manet’s famous odalisque.
2007

He also does abstract paintings with the reflective paints, which have a marvelous effect when they are seen in person.
Code 24 - 2006

Code 23 - 2006

Having also worked in film and special effects, it is no surprise that Davide has ventured into making video pieces. Recently completed "SOL" features transferred photos taken of the Sun by the Hubble telescope, which are burnt by the glass and arranged into a video. He is currently working on a video piece called “109 Years of War” in which he will draw a map of the world for every year between 1900 and 2009. For each year, every county that is engaged in war will be colored in. Each drawing will then be burned, and sequenced into a video. Also in the works is a piece called “Burning Flag,” where each frame will undergo a similar process He is also beginning to make a foray into sculpture. “With 2-D drawings, there is a much greater chance for abstraction. So how do you decide which objects will occupy a 3-D space,” he says. Only time will tell which ones he deems worthy.

Davide lives and works in Brooklyn. For more information about his work, check out his website at www.davidecantoni.org