By Artists For Artists
 

Dario Maglionico: One Identity in Numerous Parallel Realities

Fragmented Paintings

In 1957, a theory of the parallel universes of quantum mechanics (also called the multiverse theory) was officially introduced by a Princeton physics graduate student named Hugh Everett. The idea, that most physicists accepted, suggested the existence of an infinity of universes identical to ours. Furthermore, New Age spiritual and philosophical movements share this concept of numerous realities, though in their theories the reality a human is inhibiting depends on their emotional state.

Blending and exploring many-worlds interpretations, artist Dario Maglionico places them on canvas and translates his individual understanding by creating their visual representation in contemporary art.

"Reificazione #33" by Dario Maglionico, oil on canvas, 2017
"Reificazione #28" by Dario Maglionico, oil on canvas, 2017

From a young age, Dario was fascinated by the way his grandfather painted and expressed himself on the canvas. While he chose Engineering as his preferred field of study, art remained at the back of his mind propelling him to give in to his passion and become a self-taught artist. At the beginning of his artistic career, Maglionico was attracted to the study of anatomy, the volume and light of the flesh. After that, he started to study the space around the subject in its natural habitat, exploring ways in which humans interact with their environment and one another.  

"Reificazione #48" by Dario Maglionico, oil on canvas, 2018

“I focus on daily life and the experience which links all of us, in a dialogue between each other. Everything begins with my life, with my claustrophilia.”

"Reificazione #34" by Dario Maglionico, oil on canvas, 2017
"Reificazione #35" by Dario Maglionico, oil on canvas, 2017

If These Walls Could Talk

Drawing inspiration from real life, when something sparks an idea, first, Dario takes a photo of it with his smartphone or sketches a possible composition in his sketchbook. Later on, he chooses the best photos and sketches and then returns to the initial place to take more photos, following the idea of composition he previously sketched. After creating this collection of photos, he goes back to his studio and works on a photographic composition on his PC, that will be a reference to the work on canvas.

“It is the result of a series of choices. Every work is a new challenge. On each canvas, I look for a new step. Each new work is a pathway made of choices, that sometimes carries me far from my early reference.”

"Reificazione #40" by Dario Maglionico, oil on canvas, 2017

Embodying the passing of time within a frame, Maglionico uses figurative terms to create the overlapping of different scenes, thus simultaneously juxtaposing people, spaces and objects.

“Everything passes, but all remains in this eternal present, which is our identity. Our condensation of experiences, anything else.”

"Reificazione #36" by Dario Maglionico, oil on canvas, 2017
"Reificazione #39" by Dario Maglionico, oil on canvas, 2017

Even though the artist paints within a realistic means, his artwork creates dreamlike surrealistic scenes: transitory movements of his subjects make them appear more than once on the canvas, sometimes with missing limbs or other parts of the body, as if there wasn’t enough time passed for the figure to completely move.

"Reificazione #29" by Dario Maglionico, oil on canvas, 2017

Depicting different experiences, poses and emotional states of the human subject within a single scene, Dario Maglionico creates the art in which he assembles few screenshots of past and present moments and reduces them to a singular painting, creating an all-encompassing present time moment. In that way, the viewer is inspired to think about the passing of all experiences in their life, regardless of the number of parallel realities out there, realizing that the only thing that connects them all is the identity of an individual human.

All images copyright of Dario Maglionico

You can view more work by Dario on his Instagram and website.

Article written by Katarina Petric

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