Villa’s work plays into the contemporary artistic fascination with everyday. These are not paintings of epic history or drama, but images that seek to delve into the experience of daily life. The blank space between events. This is art about the poetry of the quotidian.
Nicola Villa’s work makes an interesting contrast. Innately modern, his paintings are also about narrative and character. As the artist notes, “Every person is a story. I attempt to narrate the story I see inside other people.” His works shares a similar desire to reflect the emotional experience of urban life. The titles for his paintings play with the discomfort and darkness behind the social mask of modern life. “Sometimes I start from a sensation, not from a really defined idea, and while working I focus the idea and I give a title that could be a trace for the observer to watch my work.”
The artist is particularly keen on depicting the human condition, detailing in his painting images derived from his daily walks though the streets. The life of Villa’s characters belongs to a story without plot, where figures chase one another beyond their physical presence into an imaginative atmosphere of elusive, subtle anxiety that surrounds all of us.