Boys by The pool (2021), solo exhibition at Ellen De Bruijne PROJECTS, Amsterdam.
To swim in a pool of material belongings, plunging, drifting, whirling. The water is glistening, and so are the boys, staying afloat in the quiet streams of aquatic nostalgia. Fidgety silhouettes merge into one another, blurring the limits of their bodies. The water is inviting yet challenging, for its fluid state of being is not apt for humans to live in. Partly vulnerable, partly sensual, Formica’s boys exist in a voyeuristic vacuum where their beautiful bodies swing between subject and object by our gaze, and they coexist with repurposed memorabilia and blue introspections. In Boys by the Pool, Daniele Formica invites us to dip into his watery realm and navigate its liquidity.
Daniele Formica’s new series of work follow a common thread in his practice that began last year while he was rediscovering his domestic environment. Drifting in a confining atmosphere with a decreasingly structuralised perception of time, his belongings started dissolving around him. In January this year, Formica further dived into this process in his drawing series Boys by the Pool, which originated from an attraction towards the erotic and bucolic imagery of young male figures bathing. This series evoked a new realization on the condition of floating; in Formica’s words, “liquid modernity is interpreted as a condition transforming subjects into sensual and vulnerable drifting bodies, somewhere between phenomenological victims and sentient actors playing in water.”
-text by Sergi Rusca
overview of works: https://www.edbprojects.com/exhibitions/9-daniele-formica-boys-by-the-pool/works/