Marco Pariani
Marco Pariani
Marco Pariani was born in Busto Arsizio, Italy, in 1986. The son of a woodworker, Pariani’s earliest memories are of his time in his father’s studio. These moments spent sanding and gluing wood manifested into a love of working with his hands, informing the physical process of painting for which he is now known. Pariani studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan from 2005 to 2010, where he primarily worked in figuration. However, Pariani is now highly regarded for his vividly hued abstracted canvases that push the boundaries of the genre by exploring new techniques and embedding contemporary culture into his abstractions.
Pariani’s process is labor-intensive, involving many layers of gesso that are tinted in different colors and sanded down to create a uniquely textured surface, a preparation that takes many days to complete. Through this method, he foregrounds the significance of color and process in his work. The monochrome or two-tone grounds create an enveloping field that is an important element in his paintings, as they remain a space of continued formal experimentation. In recent bodies of work, the artist has incorporated new tools such as domestic decorative rollers to incise patterns into the layers of paint.