Hauntology – Spooky Nature Of Painting

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Hauntology – Spooky Nature Of Painting, curated by Ivan Quaroni, 25 March – 14 May 2023, Giampaolo Abbondio Gallery, Today (PG).

Hauntology (portmanteau of the English terms “haunting” and “ontology”, i.e. “ghost, obsession” and “ontology”) is a concept coined by Jacques Derrida in the book Ghosts of Marx the 1993 and then taken up by Mark Fisher in his Ghosts of my life. Writings about depression, hauntology and lost futures the 2019.

Starting from the contributions of important philosophers, essayists and sociologists, Ivan Quaroni develops the concept of Hauntology coming to formulate the idea that painting has an intimately hauntological nature. Painting, any form of painting, it reiterates the haunting power of wraiths through persistence, repetitions and prefigurations that prevent any form of equation with the present. That, in fact, it systematically escapes the blocking power of reality, as understood by traditional ontology.

To give substance to these arguments, the editor leads us into a thick forest of references, dialogues and contrasts between the works of a group of Italian painters very different by generation, experiences and methods of execution, but all, each in their own way, capable of stopping in the face of time and generating an authentically hauntological painting: Giampiero Bodino, Judith Branconi, Daniel Bucchi, Pablo Candiloro, Maurizio Cannavacciuolo, Andrea Chiesi, Vanni Cuoghi, Albert DiFabio, Gianluca Di Pasquale, Fulvio Di Piazza, Elise Filomena, Daniel Galliano, Miltos Manetas, Marco Neri, Nicola Verlato, Fulvia Zambon.