Disquiet, impact, vital tension that grants no respite. From January 24, in Varese, Doriano Marocca and Giuseppe Pavia stage two distinct abstract languages, deeply interconnected. Both are driven by the same urgency: to entrust their creative instinct with bearing the weight of existence, without filters or softening. Here abstraction does not console—it carves, awakens, detonates.
Marocca and Pavia share a common vision in which control and improvisation coexist without annihilating one another. Their dialogue arises from dissonance and friction, from a painting practice that confronts the limit and surpasses it without seeking redemption. Matter and chromatic force act as primary energies—living elements that invade space and destabilize it, transforming the canvas into a field of incessant vibration. In this context, the expressive act becomes an embodied experience: an unstable, cathartic equilibrium in which risk is not a stylistic choice, but the very condition of making art.
With Chromatic Tensions, CathArt Gallery inaugurates 2026 by reaffirming an uncompromising curatorial direction: a space of continuous research nourished by authentic exchange with artists, where expressive forms do not seek consensus but provoke complex questions, devoid of single answers.
Enhancing the exhibition path will be the critical intervention of Andrea Barretta, already a guest of CathArt Gallery and present at the opening. Fresh from the exhibition Il tempo di Warhol e la Pop Art at the Museo della Stampa in Soncino, Barretta has long been active in the contemporary visual arts scene. He has curated exhibitions dedicated, among others, to Andy Warhol, Enrico Baj, Mimmo Rotella, and Mario Schifano, receiving international recognition, including interest from the Metropolitan Museum of New York. He is the author of essays and monographs and a member of the critical committee of Mondadori’s Catalogo dell’Arte Moderna.
THE THEME
“One must still have chaos within oneself to give birth to a dancing star.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
It is therefore in inner disorder, in the clash between instinct and reason, that the spark of creation is ignited. That chaos—often perceived as an obstacle—becomes the energy that shapes forms, colors, emotions. This principle guides Chromatic Tensions, where two artistic styles, different yet complementary, intertwine: on one side, Marocca’s explosive, stratified matter; on the other, Pavia’s fluid and sudden flow.
Marocca works color as if it were a living body: he stratifies, scratches, veils, pushing it beyond the boundaries of the canvas. Pavia, instead, begins with control of matter and then allows pigments to flow spontaneously, to find balance, only to be interrupted by an unexpected gesture—as if to remind us that life itself can never be fully tamed.
We are confronted with two free and relentless poetics. Neither refuge nor ornament, but a decisive choice born of the need to give form to thought. Sign and matter engage within a mutable space, where opposites coexist and seek one another. The canvas becomes a field of friction, but also of fullness—because something comes to completion.
Chromatic Tensions suggests a complex score of counterpoints, dissonances, and sudden harmonies. Chromatic ranges, often pushed to the limit, do not seek seduction but carve into the gaze, compelling a slow, meditative time of observation. What emerges is a sharp-edged beauty that invites confrontation with the most exposed zones of one’s own consciousness.
Notes on the ARTISTS
Doriano Marocca – The Freedom of Color as a Radical Act
Doriano Marocca was born in Nettuno and lives in Reggio Emilia. He began “smearing” canvases in the early 2020s, in the silence of a private space detached from any external pressure. His painterly investigation arose as a personal necessity, initially shared only with a few friends and on social media. From experimentation with brushes and acrylics, he soon moved toward a more instinctive approach using spatulas and unconventional tools, allowing for a direct, bodily mode of working.
The result is a densely stratified painting, made of superimpositions that construct and deconstruct forms in a powerful, immediate material rhythm. Critics recognize him as an artist capable of extraordinary chromatic disinhibition, in which action becomes structure and manuality turns into language.
“In my journey,” the artist explains, “I have only one fundamental principle: to be free, in a world that often is not. It is this urgency that guides me, transforming painting into a radical act, both physical and spiritual. I feel that this artistic side of mine represents a precious part of myself, something I cannot renounce—just as one cannot renounce nourishment. Every stratification, every glaze, every scratch becomes a dialogue with matter itself: I feel the painting breathe, vibrate, and respond, as if it were a living organism. Some works are studied, others sudden, where the act of painting and the state of mind take the lead without consulting me—I am merely a conduit. Often anger, boredom, and wonder form the backdrop, but lived experience is always present, because only by passing through existence can pure, uncontaminated art be born. I invite those who observe my works to perceive this energy, as testimony to a completely unbound spontaneity. I experience creativity as a self-feeding ally, which today also pushes me toward an unconventional sculptural path, made with PLA filaments, which I will present in this exhibition.”
Giuseppe Pavia – The Balance That Embraces the Unexpected
Born in Marsala in 1975, Giuseppe Pavia lives in Borgomanero. Since 2020, he has undertaken an intimate journey into the exploration of color, guided solely by a profound need for inner change. His poetics are founded on a constant dialogue between opposites: stability and momentum, reflection and impulse, form and rupture.
“My encounter with Fluid Art,” the artist recounts, “was not accidental, but the natural landing point of a personal search that provided me with the perfect language to explore my introspective world. My research autonomy, free from academic dogmas, allowed me to develop a hybrid and highly personal technique. My works are born in this space of tension. Fluid painting establishes the balance from which everything begins, embodying the reflective side of my being; dripping intervenes as the pure act, the impulsive gesture that breaks the form.”
Fluidity thus becomes a metaphor for an identity in continuous becoming, never definitively complete. Chromatic drifts and flows embody emotional states and inner contrasts, making visible a process of transformation that remains open and unresolved.
His surfaces express a personality grounded in fields of differing energies: first, the management of pigments—guided and restrained; then, the irruption of force through the casting of acrylic fluids, pours, and drips that break the rhythm and reveal new possibilities. A painting that breathes like a living organism, suspended between calm, uncertainty, and detonation.
Pavia also invites us to recognize, in those flows and drops, the very dynamics of existence: a process in which true harmony cannot arise from absolute control, but from the courage to welcome the unknown, the unexpected, and contradiction.
The exhibition is curated by Carla Pugliano, an internationally recognized artist and founder of CathArt Gallery, an immersive cultural space created to foster dialogue between matter and spirit, between contemporary urgency and artistic experimentation. Among her many awards and participations, Pugliano has been honored with the Golden Lion at the Venice Triennale, has exhibited at the 60th Venice Biennale and the 14th Florence Biennale. Since 2025, she has also served as Artistic Consultant for the Atlas of Contemporary Art (Giunti), which will be presented at the MoMA in New York. Her works are held in private, institutional, and museum collections.
Event Information
???? Exhibition dates: January 24 – February 5, 2026
???? Opening hours:
Tuesday – Friday: 4:30 pm – 6:30 pm
Saturday: 10:30 am – 12:00 pm / 3:30 pm – 6:30 pm
Sunday: 3:30 pm – 6:30 pm
???? Opening reception: Saturday, January 24, at 5:30 pm
???? Venue: CathArt Gallery, Piazza Giovanni XXIII, 11 – Varese
(Entrance from Via Salvo D’Acquisto)
Admission: Free
Media Partner: LarteCheMiPiace
Info & Contacts
+39 392 8081554
Facebook: CathArt Gallery
Instagram: @cathart_gallery
Website: https://carlapuglianoartist.com/cathart-gallery/
Email: myartcharlotte@gmail.com