Davide Quayola

PRESENTATION

Long intrigued by the link between tradition and modernity, Davide Quayola is drawn to new technology’s ability to provide him with a new and particularly fertile slate for his thought process.

From November 2018 to the end of February 2019, he will be presenting a new series of images produced during a residency at Chaumont-sur-Loire.These are large-format, very high resolution photographs, mostly computer-generated, with a considerable dataset captured using an ultra-precise laser 3D scanner. This technique enabled him to capture and record millions of points of coordinates in 3D. The dataset was then compiled and analysed by the artist.

Davide Quayola, whose approach is similar to scientific research, enjoys harnessing different technologies and software, working with algorithms or robotic techniques. He develops his own software and programs with the utmost independence. “I try to discover other languages to generate new aesthetics”: this is how the artist describes his keen interest in the instruments of expression of his time, so enabling him to see reality in a fresh light.

Regarded for his enigmatic video installations, Quayola creates hybrid spaces of animated painting and sculpture. Engaging a practice of audio-visual performance, drawing, photography and software programming, he explores a fine boundary located between the real and artificial.

Special institutional commissions of Quayola’s work have allowed him exceptionally rare access to the art and architecture of churches, theatres and museums in Europe, such as Notre Dame and the Vatican. In his work, original masterpieces and collections become raw canvas, as Quayola anchors a video-based exploration in a conversation about archives, collage, intellectual property and the appreciation of an object. In an age of the Google Art Project, which offers unprecedented access to the literal surface of a painting, Quayola handles the time we spend looking at art as a plastic artifact, something to be sculpted and suspended. The gaze is a place where the logic of a picture unfolds, seemingly excavated from beneath the image.

Also a frequent collaborator on musical projects, Quayola has worked with composers, orchestras and musicians including Ensemble Intercontemporain, Vanessa Wagner, Mira Calix, Plaid, Matthias Kispert and the National Orchestra of Bordeaux.

In 2005 he was awarded a BA from University of the Arts London.