Gabriele La Torre’s Second Soldiers at EDICOLA480, Naples

Within this system of 480 Site Specific, at EDICOLA480 beneath the creative route of Massimiliano Bastardo, the portray I secondi soldati by the painter Gabriele La Torre from Palermo, born in 2003, emerges as an apparently easy picture that, upon nearer inspection, reveals an unstable and layered perceptual building. The oil on canvas engages a readily recognizable imagery, that of plastic toy troopers, but subverts its narrative operate, reworking it right into a subject of pressure suspended between reminiscence, repetition and displacement.

The pictorial floor is dominated by a saturated orange, solely seemingly uniform, which operates much less as an actual area than as a psychological environment. There is not any perspectival depth nor an outlined floor: the small troopers seem to drift or emerge from an unsure matter, as if held inside an intermediate dimension. This chromatic selection doesn’t assemble a background however introduces a situation of visible instability that stops any coherent spatial studying. The vibrant, virtually corrosive orange subject deprives the figures of any sense of grounding, rendering them remoted, reiterated presences with out context. The figures, distributed with out hierarchy, reproduce codified postures: the soldier firing, the kneeling one, the advancing one.

Yet this gestural grammar doesn’t generate motion however slightly a sequence of fragments that by no means cohere right into a unified scene. There is not any battle, no route, no narrative growth. Repetition, as a substitute of manufacturing continuity, ends in dispersion. The teams confront one another with out ever really assembly, as in the event that they belonged to totally different temporalities or incompatible planes. A vital ingredient is the painterly rendering itself: the contours are by no means sharp, and the figures seem barely blurred, as if seen via a mnemonic filter. In some situations, drips and smears traverse the our bodies, suggesting a lack of solidity. The toy soldier, by definition a inflexible, molded, serial object, is right here rendered as a weak type, virtually unstable, poised between presence and dissolution. This pressure between iconic rigidity and painterly fragility is likely one of the most compelling points of the work.

The chromatic distinction between the teams inexperienced and beige introduces an extra layer of studying with out ever resolving into an specific opposition. These aren’t two armies, nor a clearly outlined battle: colour capabilities as a substitute as variation inside the identical system, as if distinction have been already inner to repetition. In this sense, the work avoids any rhetoric of battle, focusing as a substitute on a extra ambiguous situation wherein violence stays implicit however by no means represented. The title, I secondi soldati (“The Second Soldiers”), suggests a temporal and hierarchical shift. Not the primary, not the protagonists, however those that come after, or stay within the background. This “second” might be understood as that which exceeds the first operate of the picture: a residue, a repetition, an echo. The toy troopers are not devices of simulation however develop into indicators carrying a sedimented reminiscence, emptied of their rapid playful operate.

Within the context of EDICOLA480, the work acquires a selected depth. Its direct, frontal show, with out mediation, heightens the connection between picture and concrete area. The portray gives itself to the gaze instantly, but resists fast interpretation, holding a complexity that reveals itself solely over time. There is not any spectacle, no narrative: what stays is a floor traversed by delicate tensions, wherein the acquainted fractures and provides strategy to a extra unsettling dimension. In this work, La Torre’s portray doesn’t search to characterize a theme however to assemble a situation. I secondi soldati doesn’t depict battle, nor childhood; slightly, it positions itself exactly on the level the place these two dimensions overlap and contradict one another. It is inside this unresolved ambiguity that the work finds its power not as a picture to be decoded, however as a perceptual subject wherein the viewer is compelled to constantly renegotiate what they see.

Info:

EDICOLA480
Gabriele La Torre #5: I secondi soldati
24/04 – 08/06 2026
Via San Pasquale a Chiaia 61, Napoli
480sitespecific.com
www.instagram.com/edicola480/

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