Landscapes (pre-2017)
My pre-2017 landscapes were an attempt to make sense of a childhood growing up in Italy - surrounded since infancy by ruins and monuments of grander days - and my current life in the US surrounded by modernity, steel, glass and mass-production.
I tried to bridge this gap by creating semi-abstract, simple, landscapes and cloud installations that inspire contemplation and inner peace while blending traditional media with everyday mass-produced objects and construction materials (e.g. PVC, grout, cement, plastic beads, glassy resin). What from afar seem deceptively simple color-blocking landscapes actually hide multiple layers of media. Like a contemporary Rome, where strata of old material are piled on and topped by a thin coating of modernity, my landscapes have multiple layers of paint topped by glossy plastic clouds or shiny resin. However, there’s no social criticism in these paintings. Plastic and modernity are not negative. They are just another surface, another phase, a complementary layer.
I tried to bridge this gap by creating semi-abstract, simple, landscapes and cloud installations that inspire contemplation and inner peace while blending traditional media with everyday mass-produced objects and construction materials (e.g. PVC, grout, cement, plastic beads, glassy resin). What from afar seem deceptively simple color-blocking landscapes actually hide multiple layers of media. Like a contemporary Rome, where strata of old material are piled on and topped by a thin coating of modernity, my landscapes have multiple layers of paint topped by glossy plastic clouds or shiny resin. However, there’s no social criticism in these paintings. Plastic and modernity are not negative. They are just another surface, another phase, a complementary layer.