Mirko Leuzzi

ESSERE PITTURA
GALLERIA FIDIA
curated by Gabriele Simongini
21 October - 21 November 2022

Letting things happen. Dissolving, and then finding oneself again by giving form to one’s nightmares, dreams, and deliriums.

Being painting. Finally allowing one’s vital authenticity to emerge, beyond the fictions of a society built on a vast, collective solitude. Fragile and sensitive, yet also direct and bold, Mirko Leuzzi suddenly discovered, during the first lockdown, the primal power of painting—its ability to give immediate form to our psychophysical totality, to our biological fluid, to that “truth” within us we did not even know existed.

Through painting, Leuzzi was, in some ways, reborn. For the past two years, he has immersed himself in it completely—without safety nets or artifices, without knowing the cynical mechanisms of the art world—in order simply to be himself, a destination that many today avoid, often hiding behind the fictional identities of social media or avatars.

“I paint,” Mirko said in an interview, “because I come into contact with my own sensitivity, which takes shape through that material. And I paint because I feel it gives me a place in a society that often feels distant from me. Painting can save my life—it could.”

At first, he began painting instinctively what he himself called “monsters,” drawing them out of his unconscious—a concept that today is often stubbornly dismissed by the most fashionable sectors of the art system, in favor of creative impotence, sociological disguise, emotional anesthetization, and endless spectacle. Like a primitive enclosed in his cave, Mirko felt the need to begin again from scratch, exorcising his fears—those “wild animals” that once terrified him—entrusting himself entirely to instinct.

He later found in the female body and face a kind of multiple alter ego, capable of expressing fragility (as Guy de Maupassant wrote in “The Horla”: “we are so fragile, so defenseless, so ignorant, so small, on this grain of mud that spins, diluted in a drop of water”), as well as solitude, estrangement, discomfort, and the feeling of inadequacy within an increasingly emotionally cold world.

If at first these figures revealed the uncertain hesitations of a beginning painter, very quickly—and with growing expressive confidence—his work evolved into a deeply personal language, revealing the full richness of his inner world. It is as if, over the course of two years, the artist has moved through painting from nightmare to a kind of enchantment, still rooted in the instinctive existential depth that defines his sensibility.

Painting, after all, does not allow lies—and for this very reason, the artist identifies with it completely. Even today, in the face of new technologies, painting remains the most direct and authentic way to transmit the unconscious and thought through the action of the hand, in a mysterious osmosis that brings to the surface the truth of emotions and even universal archetypes. A painting becomes a place to enter, to inhabit—a space where something you have been carrying within yourself can finally be released. It is a kind of body made of color, a mirror of one’s own authenticity.

In Leuzzi’s recent works, flat planes of color—often bright, solar, Mediterranean—enter into a near-musical dialogue with a defined line, polyphonically modulated, at times sharp and incisive, more often sensual and welcoming. Increasingly, and with remarkable speed—clearly driven by an inner necessity—he instinctively masters deformation, transforming it into expression, and creating dreamlike settings of lush flowers and arabesque fabrics.

One wonders whether the artist is drawn to Henri Matisse and his “great decoration,” his love for the East—or, on the opposite end, whether he has ever reflected on the contorted bodies and exposed souls of Egon Schiele, or the restless figures of Gustav Klimt set within a golden splendor.

In any case, what stands out in his work are those blank, white eyes—almost reflecting a shipwreck in nothingness, searching for something to hold onto, perhaps a need to believe in something—offering a powerful image of disorientation and existential emptiness shared by those who struggle to find themselves in a world devoid of values and identity.

In one of his most recent paintings, what is that young woman—almost entirely covered by a floral sheet—hiding from, or afraid of, as she seems to look at us from a trembling distance? What are those naked figures waiting for—often alone, or pressed together almost claustrophobically, like objects of desire? Love, sex, happiness? Are these Mirko’s own questions as well?

Is it not significant that a young artist accustomed to social media and public visibility chose painting—instinctively, almost primitively—as a way to rediscover a more authentic self? And is this not yet another sign that the truth of human expression offered by painting is irreplaceable—and perhaps more necessary today than ever?

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Gabriele Simongini