GALLERI URBANE

Gallery 1:

Solo Show: ‘Green Thumb’
Stephen d’onofrio

October 5 – November 9, 2024

Galleri Urbane is pleased to announce Green Thumb, a solo exhibition of work by Stephen D’Onofrio. This is the Philadelphia-based artist’s fifth solo show with the gallery. Green Thumb is a visual exploration, where the boundaries between nature, art, and everyday design blur into a vibrant tapestry of color and form. This new body of work delves into the world of flowering vines and fruit bowls adorned with blooms, drawing inspiration from the rich tradition of European still life masters and the precision of scientific illustration.

D’Onofrio’s paintings are exquisitely evocative and delectably alive. A fruit bowl contains grapefruits and pomelos, whole and broken open to reveal juicy segments, while bees buzz languorously, rapturously around them and blooming lilies complete the picture. As a slice of life, it is tantalizing, sensory, electric: one can hear the amorous whir, smell floral ambrosia, and taste pungency. Elsewhere, morning glories or nasturtiums interlace their leafy vines, spreading them into a matrix that flirts, compositionally, with all-over pattern while remaining aware of the canvas’s edge.

In Green Thumb, the artist seeks to unravel the delicate dance between botanical abundance and the meticulous order of nature. The winks and nods to genre-painting tropes are not without precedent. His inspirations in the art-historical canon: 17th-century Italian Giovanna Garzoni, painter of cherries and lemons in luscious still lives; 16th-century German apothecary Basilius Besler, botanical illustrator of myriad species; 19th-century English textile designer William Morris, master of dizzying pure pattern. D’Onofrio’s own still lives are not allegorical, and yet they speak of the memento mori tradition. “I’m borrowing the standard composition of a shallow still life that I think feels familiar to most people” against a dark background, D’Onofrio says. “They have this lasting power.”

But equally ardent is D’Onofrio’s interest in patterns—their variations and their limits. “I like building something that feels like a pattern, but when you spend more time with it, you get rewarded by finding that it isn’t, or the pattern falls apart,” D’Onofrio says. The artist honors the historical dialogue between art and the natural world. Yet, his approach is infused with a modern sensibility that feels both intimate and accessible. The visual language draws heavily from mass-produced print design—its clean lines, bold contrasts, and repetitive patterns— creating a bridge between the grandiosity of historical art and the ubiquity of everyday imagery.

D’Onofrio’s technical aptitude—the slow layering and crisp edges—belies the critical message. Where does image-making end and pattern begin? Where does pattern end and kitsch begin? Where does idiosyncrasy end and genre begin? Where does genre end and commercialism begin? A cascading set of questions. Ultimately, Green Thumb is a comment on making, on consuming, on ornamenting—cheeky, wry, and tongue-in-cheek.

Through the lens of Green Thumb, let us cultivate an appreciation for the intricate interplay of nature, art history, and design, finding new ways to connect with the images and visual language that are readily around us today.

Gallery 2:

Solo Show, ‘Revaluation of Origin’
JUan alberto NEgroni

October 5 – November 9, 2024

Galleri Urbane is pleased to present Revaluation of Origin, an exhibition of work by Juan Alberto Negroni. This is the first solo show for Negroni, who has participated as a visiting artist in numerous group shows at the gallery since 2018. Temporality is evanescent in the artist’s new work. Or, rather, everything might be a mirage. In this first intentional foray into Artificial Intelligence, Negroni uses the technology as a potent tool in a partnership laced with dualities that culminates in a new vision,
at once dulcet and haunting, ancient and modern.

Using an AI application, the artist delivers prompts “intended to generate images of atemporal hypothetical spaces,” he says. They begin with a request for the past: 1930s or 40s black-and-white photography. From there, he leans toward the otherworldly. His subjects—collections of monoliths on abandoned beaches or hovering in deserted expanses—could be anywhere, anytime.

Layered on top is his customary grid, here used to anchor. His subject-objects disorient. They are lost, when it is unclear what it would mean to be found. They are solitary, though they share the picture plane. Melancholy and meditative despite their non-sentience, they wax nostalgic, though there is no clear before or after.

Existentially and narratively, each picture is its own enigma, delicate as a memory and hazy as smoke. They are mute; like stones or earth are mute. And their titles speak in riddles. And yet, they explore a colonial history. Inspired by architecture and archeology, Negroni has plumbed the motif of the Caribbean’s history of enslavement and colonization. “I’m trying to create a new narrative, thinking about what would have happened if those important chapters in the racial mixture that occurred in the Caribbean and South America would have never happened,” Negroni says. “The rocks, depicted in various contexts and forms, symbolize the revaluation of origins—both collective and individual.” Thus, we might read them as artifacts from an imagined future’s past.

Constantly, the artist is thinking about legacy, as well: What is left for us to carry on as a culture, but also what are we leaving for future generations? If the work is poetic, it is a poetry of the untethered. If Negroni plays the role of the archeologist, he excavates possibility instead of the past. Thus, adrift and anchored, borrowing both Surrealist and Symbolist tendencies, the works in Revaluation of Origin exist between reality and what doesn’t—and, poignantly, cannot—exist.

Galleri Urbane in Dallas
2277 Monitor St
Dallas, Tx  75206
432 386 0590
galleriurbane.com