Cygnus, 2023. Acrylic on linen, 150 x 112,5 cm.
David Dellagi’s practice aims at creating a kaleidoscopic and three-dimensional abstract universe, exploring the notion of dynamism on the canvas. In his latest works, this approach unfolds fully, as colorful polygons seem to be hurling through space, and asymmetrical patterns of color and light open up different spatial perspectives coexisting in one and the same painting.
Using cut-outs of photographic material, each painting starts out as a paper collage, allowing for a layered visual multiverse of references hidden inside the paintings. The collage is then manipulated digitally and painted onto the canvas. With their use of hard-edge geometric color fields, the paintings have much in common with concrete abstract art. Dellagi seeks to fuse this aesthetic with the three-dimensional and kaleidoscopic sensibility of early 20th-century art movements, such as Futurism and Cubism.
Hyperspace, the title of the exhibition, refers to the spatial sense of ‘hyperdynamic speed and motion in the paintings. It also refers to the science fiction concept of hyperspace, whose basic premise is that vast distances through space can be traversed quickly by traveling faster than light. Scientifically speaking, though, faster-than-light travel is an impossibility. The works in the show are preoccupied with this impossible idea of miraculously jumping around the cosmos, just as in the inspirational ‘stargate’ section of Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 science fiction film “2001: A Space Odyssey”, where the starry void stretches out before us, erupting into a kaleidoscope of colour and accelerating lights.