Dark Art: folds of light

This book is entirely dedicated to the growing exploration of darkness by contemporary art in its outlines.

I mean black paintings and installations devoted to the darkness we all remember but which has been discussed about by few experts.

It is the dark art which does not have a specific name yet: for the time being, dark art? Since they are dark and perhaps because of their poor visibility, there is still a lot to say about the big number of the modern works of art in conditions of darkness. Here, in this book of art which is not a history book, we are trying, experimentally, to draw people s attention to their dark side.

Everything starts from the work of a painter, Giampiero Podesta, who is now presenting a further cycle of monochromatic paintings spread out on blue and black, conceived not only as space but also as time conditions that he has been exploring for many years in his works.

In this respect an art historian, Gerard-Georges Lemaire, offers the bases for a learned analysis of chromatic symbolism and of the historical origins of these folded paintings along with the tale of his own experience. And another historian, Tommaso Trini, mindful of the analogies between art and science, puts forward the proposal to go back, together with Podesta, to an age-old submerged river, the one pertaining to art in darkness. And to the vision of darkness itself.