Emilio Gola

Emilio Gola was born in 1994 in Milan, where he lives and works. After graduating in Architecture from the Politecnico di Milano, he continued his studies at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, obtaining a Second Level Academic Diploma in Painting. Gola belongs to a generation that seeks to capture the essence of youth, its turmoil, and its nocturnal atmospheres through art.

In his works, the protagonists are young people, perhaps his peers, portrayed in moments suspended between wakefulness and dream. Lying on the grass, immersed in a silence that seems to scream restlessness, these young individuals appear vulnerable and intense. Some gazes, sparkling and filled with tension, emerge from the canvas, fixing the viewer as if seeking answers or wanting to communicate a hidden secret. An abandoned Coca-Cola can near a reclining body becomes a symbol of a quotidian life intermingling with the emotional disorder of youth.

The bodies painted by Gola cling to one another, entwined in a physical closeness that, outside the brief interlude of youth, might seem too intense, perhaps even uncomfortable. The nocturnal atmospheres enveloping these scenes are warmed by artificial lights: they could emanate from the dim lighting of an urban park, but it is more likely that a fire’s glow creates this intimacy. It is a collective ritual that marks the night of youth, a slow and initiatory passage.

For Gola, the night becomes a place of silent transformation, a moment when time seems to stop or slow down, where life hides behind darkness, shielded by its shadow. The darkness conceals and guards metamorphosis, protecting what would be too vulnerable to the light of day. The theme of otium, understood as time for self-discovery and exploration of interpersonal relationships, discreetly weaves through his canvases.

In the silence of the night, interrupted only by the chirping of crickets, Gola captures the sweet solitude and complicity among his subjects. The proximity between the bodies is palpable, but the close composition of the frames traps the characters, focusing attention on their gestures and emotions rather than on the context or landscape. As he himself recounts: “My first painting is a portrait of a friend who fell onto the couch, and the central point is no longer the face but the fall itself. I moved away from introspection in this way. And when more people were added to the painting, they generated mechanisms of humanity—encounters that ultimately describe my context.”