The Nature Of Fear Nicola Samori «2024»

Samorì takes this vocabulary and pushes it into seizure. He asks: What happens when the painting begins to decay while you are still looking at it? That is the nature of his fear: . The Anatomy of Samorì’s Fear Let us break down the specific mechanisms Samorì uses to bypass our intellectual defenses and attack the nervous system directly. 1. The Flaying of the Surface Most painters want to preserve the image. Samorì wants to destroy it. In works like Le Tentazioni di San Girolamo or his series of Saints , he applies thick layers of black, brown, and crimson oil paint. Then, while the paint is still wet, he scrapes it away with palette knives, spatulas, or even his fingernails.

This is not magic; it is neuroscience. The human brain is wired to detect faces and damage. When a face is partially erased, the brain’s amygdala (the fear center) activates because it cannot resolve the ambiguity. Is the face suffering? Is it dead? Is it looking at me? the nature of fear nicola samori

In the hushed, sterile halls of a contemporary art gallery, we expect comfort. We expect clean lines, conceptual distance, and the safe irony of the postmodern. But when you stand before a painting by Nicola Samorì , something archaic awakens in your gut. It is not surprise. It is not confusion. It is pure, unmediated fear . Samorì takes this vocabulary and pushes it into seizure

The result is a portrait that looks like it is suffering. Faces emerge from the darkness only to be slashed open, revealing the white canvas beneath as if it were bone. This technique—called sfumato ’s evil twin—creates a visceral response. We do not simply see a damaged face; our own skin sympathizes. We wince. Perhaps even more disturbing than the slashed paintings are Samorì’s “relics.” He often applies gold leaf to his wooden panels—the traditional Byzantine ground for halos and holiness. But he then scrapes the figures off entirely, leaving only a ghostly imprint, a shadow burned into the gold. The Anatomy of Samorì’s Fear Let us break

Not the jump-scare fear of a horror film, but a deeper, existential dread—the kind that medieval peasants must have felt when gazing upon a crucifixion scene bleeding through the soot of a candlelit chapel. Samorì, an Italian painter born in Forlì in 1977, has built a career on dissecting this specific emotion. To understand his work is to understand that fear is not the opposite of beauty; it is its most honest form. To grasp the nature of fear in Samorì’s work, one must first look backward—way back to the 17th century. Samorì is a classically trained painter; his technical skill rivals Caravaggio, Ribera, and Bernini. He can paint a silken fold of fabric or a translucent layer of skin with the precision of an Old Master. But he uses that virtuosity as a trap.

Fear here operates through absence. You see the shape of a face, a hand, a torso, but the flesh is gone. You are looking at the —the empty shroud of a body that has dissolved in agony. The gold, instead of representing heaven, becomes a garish backdrop for oblivion. 3. The Inversion of Scale Samorì frequently paints on black, circular copper panels. The material is precious; the shape is intimate (like a cameo or a mirror). But the content is monstrous. Heads are twisted on spines. Mouths are frozen open in silent screams that never arrive. Because the works are small, you must lean in close. You cannot view them from a safe distance.