Dante Cannatella’s first solo exhibition Heat, explores intimacy, melancholy and identity in an expressionistic occasionally grotesque form of storytelling that verges on abstraction. Cannatella’s work is evocative of his native New Orleans; the city’s languor, and the landscape of South Louisiana. In his paintings, we encounter brooding, ambiguous figures portrayed in surreal scenarios. Cannatella's intimations of a hovering trauma are perceptible not only in his subjects but also in his brushwork and the heavily worked surfaces of his paintings. His is a world inhabited by splendor, lost love, divinity, disintegration, innocence, crime and punishment. There is a morbid vitality within the decay of matter and mere mortals. Cannatella’s process is both reactive and generative. He engages with layers of paint, scraping and sanding, his brushstrokes both build on and reveal traces of themselves. His forms are muscular and gentle, his palette navigates mystery and luminosity in a dreamlike terrain. Moving Target (2020) is an otherworldly portrait of the artist's grandfather, a hard yet vulnerable man, a natural-born raconteur. He wears a rosary with a cross, smokes a cigarette, and cradles a gun that may not always hit its target. A large part of the canvas is occupied by what could be a skull or perhaps the back of another person's head leaving the piece lurching with a sense of doom. Through Cannatella’s intuitive investigations, his works explore social concerns against the backdrop of the American South’s cultural character. Born in 1992 in New Orleans, Dante Cannatella lives in New York, where he attends Hunter College.

Opening reception: Thursday, Nov 19, 12 - 8pm

mpefm USA art press release