Villa Amphitrite

Concept: I was presented with the opportunity in February to create a small collection of paintings for a small gallery space in San Niccolo Firenze the challenge for me was to create a body of small works that seemed more expansive. I had to conceptualize a different space within and apart from the gallery. 

I often make references to myth and our collective history. An endless resource of inspiration, the way humans have created beauty and refined nature to capture moments leaves me breathless. One of my favorite museums in Italy is the Napoli museum of archeology. It is where most frescoes from Pompeii where taken and deposited. Removed from their natural spaces they are de-contextualized. The resulting curation is room after room of homeless wall fragments. 

What was most striking though was how those pieces of other peoples lives from centuries ago could create a whole mental image of the way the space had been. They us to a time and place archaic and familiar. Within them we see a reflection of our social journey, its consistencies and anomalies. From those inchoate understanding new concepts of spacial dynamics presented themselves. The attraction of new media is its kinetic nature. Always moving, always young and new. The attraction of painting, architecture and design is that they are in essence static. They decompose, but aside from that they are consistent. A well made painting much like a person will reveal itself slowly. Its intricacies will either attract us more to it, or revolt us. Non nomadic architecture for time eternal has helped us recognize our place on the earth and has until very recently been created to be a reflection of its materials and the pride of the people who made it.

Beginning with an idea of formulated non space and imaginary architecture I began to build a group of images utilizing a series of prints I did last year based on sea life. Named the Villa Amphitrite series they where an exploration into organic nautical patterns. I then glued them to "wall fragments" and began to build decorative elements that could be digested singularly or as a whole.

The Fragments had to be both small and intimate as to enmesh well with the show space and also expansive in their concepts so as not to seem anorexic when being displayed. I achieved this in the installation by placing four groupings of paintings on the wall. The two central groupings I then bridged with the addition of a silk screened piece of fabric and sculptural elements. The addition of these two elements unified the two central groupings to create a total of three.

The central mass then weighted the show with a mixed media piece that the viewer can decipher. Printed, painted, sculpted and lit the combination of decorative artistic elements enables a recollective cataloguing of elements. The are recognizable in comparison to other things we have seen but strange and otherworldly in the same moment.

       

I was fortunate to see a Mimmo Rotella retrospective in Nice. His irreverence to imagery was striking, liberating and inspiring. I took away from it the idea of not holding images so sacred. By allowing printed images to be de-completed at random a new visual vocabulary develops. Though I was not to keen on his use of paint, his use of already printed material was masterly. In this series I started each painting with printed material. In a personal battle I had to remind myself to get over myself. When the source of the work is your own hand it becomes increasingly difficult. I akin it to disciplining a child to be a reflection of your parenting. I love my babies, I think they are going to do great things in the world. I am so honored to have midwifed them into existence.