Salvatore Garau. Variazioni in bianco e nero

“There are two scraps of cloth on my desk, and I use them to clean what is left of some black paint on my brushes by painting on them. [...] There are certain things only I know. Everything is being directed by some mystical force, or maybe I am just extremely lucky and everything will be fine. I have not even one bit of canvas to throw away. Not one movement wasted.” — from the introduction by Salvatore Garau.

On the occasion of the exhibition at the Corraini Art Gallery in 2008, the 60 tiny paintings on canvas by Salvatore Garau are collected in a book with an introduction by the artist himself and some of his poems. Dominated by the motive of different shades of black, mixed together on little canvas fragments, these paintings have been all realised in 2007.

Differently from his traditional works, dominated by medium and large format, Salvatore Garau develops here a stylistic exercise on little dimensions as a mirror of a precise sensation of his soul without losing any emotivity. Differently from Scultura nel cielo (Sculpture in the sky), enormous work (about 200 sqm) on display in 2005 in the city centre of Milan, these works by Garau are the result of a pursuit of a more inner aesthetic dimension.