Davide Balliano’s artistic practice is self-described as monastic, austere, and concrete. His work walks the line between painting and sculpture, and uses an austere, minimal language of abstract geometric forms that is in close dialogue with architecture. Although Untitled_0305 appears at first to be clean and minimal, a closer look reveals a complicated balance between a precise and well-planned graphic structure and a violent and organic surface of scratches, drippings, layering and weathering. Balliano is also deeply interested in the idea of the sublime, which is rooted in his early childhood experiences embarking on extended camping trips in Torino, Italy. Like the daunting and beautiful power of nature, Balliano’s work captures the feeling that there is a larger macrocosm or system that is too overwhelming to be described, but it can be encapsulated through geometry and simple forms.