Delve into the world of myth and reality in the upcoming exhibition The Book of Giants, created by artist Paul Glaviano, which will be on view from Thursday, October 23 - Sunday, November 30, 2025.
Paul Glaviano is an artist, educator, and chef, who resides in Alameda, CA. Glaviano received a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Master of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute. His work was born of the West Coast Abstract Expressionist movement.
Glaviano is a prolific painter and multi-media creator who uses oil paint, collage, gouache, and dry-point etching techniques to investigate the global consequences and byproducts of troubled human evolution and endless war. He manipulates materials such as stretched canvases to roofing paper, railroad ties, ink, paste, charcoal, pastels, staples, wood and screws. His works mirror and mediate his struggle toward higher levels of cognition, communication, and humanitarianism.
He has previously exhibited his artwork at O'Hanlon Center for the Arts in Mill Valley and the Berkeley Art Museum.
The Book of Giants special exhibition showcases multimedia works in which oversized figures battle, burn, bleed, and devour one another exploring the chaotic world described by several poetic works of antiquity, including The Book of Giants and The Book of Enoch. The artworks displayed also draw inspiration from Dante’s Inferno and Rodin’s bronze sculpture “The Gates of Hell.”
Depicting primeval conflict and the elemental forces of nature, the works imagine a world inhabited by the Nephilim, giant beings who were engendered when 200 fallen angels mated with the daughters of men. According to the scrolls, these giants roamed the earth prior to the great flood described both in Genesis and the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. Despite their great size and strength, the giants were vulnerable both to the wrath of God and to their own violent tendencies.
These artworks serve as allegory for our current volatile state of global affairs and our uncertain future, posing the question of whether our current vulnerabilities and battlefields do not resemble those of the Nephilim in significant ways.
These works include “Flammas Tutelas (Guardians of the Fire),” “Sleeping Giant,” “Two Giants Wrestling in the Muck,” “Two Giants Devouring One Another,” and “Giants Killing One Another on the Battlefield, with God's Help.” Politically relevant works include “Giants of the Supreme Court,” “Sleeping-Giant Head,” and “Giant Orange Toddler.”
The range of subject matter and the daunting size of the primary works will enable attendees to engage with both age-old myth and with the “giants” who quarrel, build, and destroy in our own time.
Celebrate the opening of The Book of Giants on Friday, October 24, 2025 from 6-8PM. Opening receptions are always free and open to the public. Beverages will be available for purchase.
