We’re christening our new account with one of the very best in contemporary narrative painting; Vincent Desiderio. He is a master painter particularly skilled in the play of cool and warm colours, which have an unsettling effect on us the viewers – something akin to the work of Antonio Lopéz García, whose paintings make us feel like we’re viewing the aftermath of a crime scene through a filter of concrete dust. Although there’s less dust and more realism in Desiderio’s work, a remnant of grittiness remains to put us at ill ease. Our bodies sense that we’ve been in this chilling scene before and something went terribly wrong. Desiderio often provides us with a timely snapshot of just one scene in some unwritten macabre story, and we’re left to make up the narrative ourselves. It’s not easy art; we have to work at it. Our imaginations immediately start constructing the plot and assigning roles to the characters in what is ultimately an unsolvable mystery.
