Dominic Musa
Itch for Solitude
December 11, 2021, to January 22, 2022
Galerie Nicolas Robert is proud to present Itch for Solitude, Dominic Musa’s first exhibition with the gallery. Symbols are abound–metaphorically or through pictorial organization. The feeling of being alone. All that we observe and all that we process, can register among us. A dark night down an alley, with a loved one–after hours, using one's whole body to dive through transparency, to dive through manifestation. Spirits are abound–theoretically and visually. Let’s ask if we can pave our own path and take a position.
There can be direct interactions and subconscious interlopes in our surroundings. We strive for a collective thread, to communicate with one another along a hidden psychological purview. Dominic Musa’s work explores the subtle and subconscious tension within his mind and how it translates for each viewer during reflection. Musa creates work that can challenge the viewer and how they gaze or contemplate each painting they are confronted with. This shifts the artist from the maker into an observer and narrator. Each space within the paintings reveal moments about existentialism, anxiety, and alienation.
The collectivism explored in Musa’s work is rooted in the psyche via observation, discovery, and self-realization. These psychological spaces are oftentimes inaccessible or compartmentalized but can be revealed by the manifestation of abstract ideas.
Musa’s paintings fuse his personal experiences via invention, peripheral observation, and recollection with the collective psyche. The paintings pull from personal and found photographs utilizing creation, erasure, time and ultimately visual meditation. This taps into the subconscious psychological thread grouping the perceived personal, collective ideas and images by forming an internal discourse from the artist onto each viewer. This invites the viewer into Musa’s visual worlds and to participate in a common dialogue through a continual communion or network.
Dominic Musa (b. 1989) lives and works in Paterson, New Jersey. He received an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BFA from the SVA—School of Visual Arts, in New York. His past solo and group exhibitions include: Outside and Around at Y2K Group (New York), Unsettled Waters at Taymour Grahne Projects (London), Dal Segno at Y2K Group (New York), Anywhere Out Of The World at Helena Anrather (New York), Beach at Taymour Grahne Projects (London), and Highway Blues, curated by JJ Manford at Underdonk (Brooklyn).
