Born in Milan in 1994 where he still currently lives and works, Emilio Gola earned a Bachelor’s degree in Architectural Design at the Polytechnic of Milan and later obtained a degree in Painting at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts.  

Gola’s painterly practice is one that happened by itself. Three bodies tangle, mingle, and melt together in a search for balance, taking on informal, disorderly poses in a continuous exchange of roles. Life drawing is the paradigm within his paintings, managing to capture all the freedom given to the models whilst they pose. By letting others play, with only the intrusion of the artist’s eye drawing on the canvas, the scenes come to life amidst the precious contrasts between playing and boredom. Found objects, which chaotically inhabit the studio where Gola works, complete the composition of his works: they multiply endlessly, becoming a formless heap that envelops the characters, to such an extent that the difference between bodies and objects becomes blurred.

For Gola, painting is an image of the struggle between self-definition and dematerialization of everyday reality. Objects and bodies are always balanced in a tension between organic and inorganic, making it easy to recognize oneself in the noisy blob of jagged flesh along with its extensions. It is not so much the shoe or the book in its singularity, but what that object provides to man for the definition of the self. It is the song of those who try to define their role through things or others, thrown into a search for meaning that is repeated in endless combinations and personalities.

Gola’s paintings create an atmosphere that is both drowsy as it is frivolous, and refer to a mysterious and timeless moment, not outlining any defined place as the theater of the scenes. It is the paintings themselves that define the space, made up of continuous changes of register, alternating thick paint with chalk, along with layers of pointed as well as softer masses of color.

In addition, Emilio distorts the typical function of utensils that do not belong to traditional painting, such as knives, wire mesh transformed into stencils or plastic packaging that become stamps of expanses of confetti. Like a jigsaw puzzle, the paintings come to life: a reflection of the playful and tumultuous painterly work, in search of new forms and procedures, and which travel in parallel with what happens to the subjects, who are always engaged in finding a new way to experiment.