Valerio Nicolai
Biography
Valerio Nicolai (Gorizia, IT 1988), lives and works in Milan. He studied at Accademia delle Belle Arti in Venice. Nicolai was awarded the Osvaldo Licini Prize in 2023 and the 2020-21 Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant.Valerio Nicolai uses the space of painting to confront art history’s consecrated subject matters with elements of the prosaic and the everyday. The traditional still life, a tool for both deadpan description and ambiguous symbolism, is declined into contemporary commonplace objects, images and banal situations. Drama and humor end up inhabiting his fictional scenes, building a tension between glorified artistic topics and the realistic, absurd way they can come into existence.
Valerio Nicolai recently had one solo exhibition in Milan at Clima titled Sole con le code (2022).Prior to this he had several solo exhibitions such as Birthmarker at Galeria Madragoa in Lisbon (2021), Heart’s rock and Potato’s spirit at Las Palmas Project in Lisbon (2018), Prospettiva di una matrioska at smART Foundation in Rome, Trasformazione permanente di un mago in formica at Treti Galaxie in Turin (2016),Walking with Art at Spazio Monotono in Vicenza (2013),Falansterio at Spazio Morris in Milan (2012),Difetto come indizio del desiderio at Galleria Neon in Bologna (2011).
His work has been showcased in several group exhibitions, including Diario Notturno at MAXXI in Rome (2024), PickPocket, curated by Massimiliano Scuderi and Renata Lucas at Fondazione Zimei in Montesilvano (2023), Expectations , curated by Massimiliano Scuderi at Fondazione Zimei in Pescara(2022), Panorama Monopoli curated by Vincenzo De Bellis (2022), Movie Buff, curated by Alfredo Aceto, Sul Disegno e la Pittura (Ne Usciremo), curated by Renato Leotta, at Galeria Madragoa in Lisbon, Basta at Palazzo Monti in Brescia (2021), Stasi Frenetica, curated by Ilaria Bonacossa at GAM in Torino, Quadriennale Arte 2020 in Rome; Art Residency - Port Tonic Art Center, SWAMP HORSES, Spirit Vessel, Espinavessa (2019); straperetana 2018, curated by Saverio Verini, Pereto (2018), Trigger Party, curated by Andrea Magnani e Zoe De Luca at Marselleria in Milan (2018), Shit and Die, curated by Maurizio Cattelan at Palazzo Cavour in Turin (2014).
