Silvio Mildo: All Flowers Need Watering

EVENT DESCRIPTION

Yidi Art is proud to present Silvio Mildo’s first solo in Hong Kong, “All Flowers Need Watering” from 6 January to 2 February 2023. Abstract, sometimes primitive, the artist approaches painting with spontaneity, almost instinctively to capture the outpouring of his thoughts, his memories, his emotions. His works compile into a logbook of his intimate life and his moods.

Painting is acquiring order and rigor through the canvas to Mildo. By the matter of energy and movements, his creative process gives him absolute freedom to define his own space, focus, and brings him back to basics, a way of reassuring himself to exist. With Crayon, oil paint, spray, acrylic and more, the artist mixes textures and renderings to better experiment with new approaches and “tame chaos”. The result is an effervescent and exuberant painting, with assumed freedom.

“I am the very expression of my person when I paint. It’s a way of reassuring yourself to exist. Especially in a time when everything is very quickly consumed. Where instability reigns over everything. Where the smallest thing that is, remains very fragile. It’s more a search for origins, a way to refocus myself, to be able to offer viewers a very personal sample of who I am.”
– Silvio Mildo

This exhibition concretizes his motif of the apricot fruit to begin his journey on memory – his origins and Armenian roots from his mother. In order to explore an unknown side, practically set aside himself, he delves into his memories and probes his Armenian roots reinterpreting this emblem of Armenia. Mildo further explores the territory of painting, purifies his color palette and airs his compositions to channel his impulses and leave ample room for sketching and line.

“I did not choose to paint apricots. It came to me in an obvious way.”
– Silvio Mildo

Apart from the apricot being the emblematic fruit of Armenia, according to a biblical legend of Noah’s ark, which ran aground on the one of the slopes of the Mount Ararat in historical Armenia, on the soil Noah fertilized nothing could grow but the apricot tree. The fascination linked to this resistance is a way for the artist to materialize all living things to become as strong as this tree and resist the floods of life.

ABOUT THE ARTIST / ORGANISER

Silvio Mildo was born in Marseille in 1992. His parents are of Portuguese origin for his father, Armenian for his mother. From childhood, he developed a marked taste for art. Self-taught, he became a painter at the age of 22. After discovering and exploring graffiti, he embraced a studio practice nourished by various influences, from abstract expressionism to the COBRA movement, from Pierre Bonnard to Pierre Alechinsky and Robert Combas.

In 2017, he first joined the Saltiel gallery in Aix-en-Provence and took part in a series of fairs (Art Elysées, St-Art Strasbourg, Lille Art Up!, etc.). The following year, he was also spotted by the Gallery Jo Yana in Marseille. After having presented him in a group exhibition and a duo show, the latter successively devoted two solo shows to him in 2021 and 2022. The artist's paintings are also exhibited in Tokyo (Between the arts, 2020, Tokyo Nights, 2021 , Tokyo Nights III, 2022) and at the Ground Effect gallery (Paris). In 2022, following a competition organized in 2022 by the Moleskine Foundation, he presented a sketchbook at the Palais de Tokyo.