Piero Golia
Concrete Cakes and Constellation Paintings
23 Jun – 5 Jul 2011
Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills

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Piero Golia, Concrete Cakes and Constellation Paintings, Installation view, Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills, CA, 2011

In this exhibition, Golia applies his embrace of contingency to more traditional forms of art production. The Constellation Paintings derived from an incident in 2010 where a taxi-driver smashed his car directly into Golia’s house following an argument over a fare. The impact demolished most of his possessions including his collection of art, furniture, and design. Salvaging debris from the total disaster, Golia burnished the remnants and embedded them within large slabs of jet-black glossy resin to produce vast abstractions with lustrous, galactic surfaces. In these “action paintings,” scintillating particles create the illusion of whirling movement, and the impressive scale imbues them with a wondrous quality.