"Beyond Time", at Nohra Haime Gallery from 7 oct to 7 nov 2009 is Andrea Chiesi’s first solo exhibition in New York and marks an important step in his career.

From the gallery press release:

ANDREA CHIESI: BEYOND TIME, a bold exhibition featuring eighteen enigmatic oil paintings will be on view at the Nohra Haime Gallery from October 7 through November 7. This will mark Chiesi’s first solo exhibition in New York.

Fascinated by the notions of abandonment, and inspired by illicit incursions into anonymous, desolated interiors and deserted structures, Chiesi documents echoes of forgotten spaces. With a limited palette of black, white and gray, and a rigorous, nearly maniac obsessive discipline, the artist reclaims spaces consigned to oblivion and depicts what is absent: the everyday activity and labor with its social implications.

Driven by the hidden memories that took place within the sites he chooses to portray, the artist presents haunting scenes charged with an overpowering presence, both symbolic and mysterious. This is the case, for instance, of Kali Yuga 35, 2006, a now sealed construction site once filled with the struggles and laments of the working class. The iron skeleton, metallic fencing and the dinosaur-like crane are the only reminders, and thus silent witnesses, of the long gone workers and the arduous tasks they performed. Equally suggestive and melancholic is Tempo 24, 2005, a deserted factory where the gleam of sunlight that illuminates the cathedral-like ceilings is the only symbol of the souls that once labored there.

Not just inhabited industrial archaeology, but also solemn empty interiors stimulate Chiesi’s work. This is manifested in Ombra 5, 2009, a confined and somber library room where dust-covered archives left abandoned on a desk are the only vestiges of the melancholic and lonely reader that was once present.
In this manner, with a remarkable precision and control of the medium, Chiesi uncovers the true hidden nature and occult power of these serie and mute spaces. He transcends reality and places his locations into a greater abstract and emotional dimension to reveal images of the memory, the invisible. And even though we don’t see the physicality of man, we do perceive and sense his presence and legacy. It is the abstract metaphors in this arresting exhibition that feeds the
imagination and emotions of the spectator.

Andrea Chiesi was born in Modena, Italy in 1966. He has represented his country at the Biennale of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean, Marseille, in 1999, at the Prague Biennale in 2003, and at the XXIX Biennale d’Arte Alto Roncaglia in 2006. Chiesi has also been the recipient of numerous international awards, including the V Premio Cairo in 2004, the Sovereign European Art Prize, Bonhams, in 2006, and most recently, the Megawatt Award of the Terna Prize
for Contemporary Art in 2008.