American Prayers is the first exhibition by Aldo Sergio (Salerno, 1982) in the United States of America, and follows the artist's solo show in Milan at Tommaso Calabro in 2024.
For the occasion, Sergio presents a selection of works from the Prayers series, which could be described as his most constant and long-lasting production. Since 2018, Sergio has expanded this specific body of work, portraying different subjects with the same care, attention to detail and intimacy.
Prayers is a series of oil paintings on paper mounted on wood, in which everyday objects, partly related to the artist's memory and partly carefully selected from a myriad of other objects, are reproduced to scale on a neutral background.
Aldo Sergio has always worked in search of the sacred element in the everyday, which in Prayers takes shape through the objects he portrays. Far from being a mere exercise in style, Sergio’s Prayers bear witness to an invisible life that settles with experience and time. In this body of work, the artist explores the sacred potential of inanimate objects that become amulets, imbued with energies and powers, but also the human need to give things a value beyond their mere use.
The red paint applied on the back of the works, which reflects like neon on the wall against which they are leaning, allows the objects depicted, and each painting, to carry their potential aura with them.
For his US debut, Aldo Sergio enriches the Prayers series with new iconographies inspired by a trip to America, in which the contrast between the deliberately clichéd subjects and the miniaturist precision of their painting unleashes the totemic potential of these small objects.
