Contoni's work is based on images published in the New York Times.In most cases these are politically controversial photos such as the picture of the child soldiers in the Congo. He enlarges the images and transfers them to tissue paper, and then uses sunlight and a magnifying glass to scorch the paper. By transferring these public pictures into his "burn drawings" he intensifies the motifs and takes away their transience. Despite their fragility the burnt events become witnesses of our own world - a world that we essentially perceive through a deluge of images.

Even in his soft and delicate paintings Cantoni records daily events that we find so fleeting. Cantoni's portrait paintings  are striking, with fate imprinted in the faces.They are very direct, they look us straight in the eye as if they have caught us looking at them.The viewer, who as an outsider is only remotely confronted with the fate of other people, feels accused of voyeurism and yet cannot take his eyes away.The colors and composition of a picture such as the "Woman with child/Pakistan" harks back to the original religiously motivated picture on this topic, namely the Madonna and Christ child.

Like the other pictures in this series, this is depicted in bright paste-like colors, mostly in white and gray tones applied in multiple layers and glazes.At first sight the pictures are difficult to recognize; they look like apparitions seem through a veil and demand intensive scrutiny.As day-to-day events fade from our memories, the depicted scenes disappear as quickly as they appeared and yet are captured in the picture.

Davide Cantoni was born in 1965 in Milan. He lives and works in New York.