Working primarily in painting, Daniele Toneatti (b. 1989 in Venice, IT) engages with art making from a perspective both analytical and emotional. Drawing on found imagery culled from various sources, ranging from stock photographs to art historical references, he collects images that he reinterprets and samples into paintings akin to diary entries. His speedy and energetic execution as well as his blurring of cultural hierarchies echo current patterns of visual consumption in today's image economy. Yet, informed by postmodern art theories, Toneatti's practice holds a dialogue with art history that goes back far beyond the proliferation and circulation of images in the contemporary digital age. Drawing from a wide array of references encompassing Impressionism, Dada, and the Pictures Generation among others, he approaches painting from a singular appropriation-based perspective. The formal diversity of the work itself indicates that each painting is a reaction to a pre-existing picture. Here, virtuosic technical skills coexist with more immediate and intuitive approaches, figuration dissolves into abstraction, and hasty sketching stands equal with finished paintings. Drawing links between heterogenous images, styles, and sources, Toneatti assembles a captivating atlas of his own journey into visual culture. Toneatti had his solo debut at Open Forum in Berlin in 2023. Titled Das Ding, the exhibition explored our era of image nihilism, questioning the flattening of both culture and our aesthetic experiences. His first exhibition with Peres Projects opens this February at the Milan space.
