As a young man in Naples, Golia studied chemical engineering, learning about the transformation of raw materials into powerful energy sources. [1]
Work
In 2008, Golia was invited to take over a booth at the Art LA fair; his contribution was to completely fill the space with a full-sized passenger bus that had been dramatically crushed by bulldozers to fit the dimensions of the exhibition space. [3]
Retaining ties to his Italian roots, Golia was selected to represent Italy at the Biennale di Venezia in 2013. Golia installed Untitled (My Gold Is Yours) (2013), a gray cube 2.5 meters tall, composed of thirty-six tons of concrete mixed with two kilograms of gold sand and set directly on a grassy outdoor plaza. He then invited visitors to “mine” the sculpture for gold, a social proposition that would transform the physical form and monetary value of the work independent of the artist's own direct actions. [4]
In 2013 he opened Chalet, [5] an underground Hollywood speakeasy (later restaged as Chalet Dallas [6] at the Nasher Sculpture Center in 2015 [7] ) that was conceived as a space combining architecture, entertainment, and art. Working with architect Edwin Chan, Golia created his Chalets to encourage social interactions and generate a convivial art community that was visited by movie stars, art world luminaries, a local marching band, acrobats, and even a pair of alpacas. During the closing celebration of the four-month-long Dallas installation,Golia hired a mariachi band, arranged a fireworks display, and commissioned a large stage curtain printed with the iconic closing sequence from Looney Tunes cartoons, with the words “That’s All Folks!” His immediately recognizable Mariachi Painting series (2016), made from cut and stretched swatches of the Chalet Dallas curtain, serve as relics of this spectacular event. [8]
For an exhibition at Kunsthaus Baselland, Switzerland, in 2017, he realized the kinetic sculpture The Painter, [9] which featured a robot programmed to paint abstract geometric forms onto eight large canvases whenever movement in the exhibition space was detected. The resulting Basel Paintings (2017) retain visual evidence of the process of their own making.
The Mountain School
In 2005, Golia and the artist Eric Wesley developed a free, bare-bones, yet ambitious graduate school—no tuition, no degree, but a vigorous curriculum—centered on talks and seminars led by visiting artists and curators. The Mountain School of Arts was born. After a few years, Eric Wesley left and Golia has carried on running the school himself. Since 2005, the program has evolved into a forum where hundreds of students have received instruction from guest faculty including the artists Tacita Dean, Thomas Demand, Simone Forti, Dan Graham, Mark Grotjahn, Pierre Huyghe, Catherine Opie, Jeff Wall, and many others" [10]
