Textures & Patterns

Our first Art competition “Textures & Patterns” started in July 2020 and concluded on August 11, 2020. Art Room Gallery received entries from many countries around the world: USA, Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Canada, United Kingdom, Italy, Australia, Puerto Rico, Sweden, Costa Rica Singapore, Chile, Poland, Uruguay, Taiwan and China. The Textures & Patterns theme in this competition included a diversity in types, styles and mediums (oil on canvas, acrylic, photography, pastel, mixed media, digital, resin and pigments, watercolor, glass, iron, fiber, ink, monoprint, cold wax, copper, concrete, enamel and colored pencil). The following evaluation criteria has been used for judging the artwork: creativity, interpretation of the theme, originality and quality of art, overall design, demonstration of artistic ability, and usage of medium. Jury decided to select 158 artworks for inclusion in the exhibition. Aside from First, Second, and Third place Jury also presented Merit awards and Honorable Mention awards.

Thank you, and enjoy the exhibition!

Statement:

I have always worked almost exclusively with acrylic on canvas. I have always worked using unconventional methods, as well. This has not been for purposes of being different for different's sake, but in order to express what I want (need?) to express. Consequently, I have made it a habit over the years to play with paint in order to learn more about what it is capable (and not capable) of doing. This has led me to paint on glass, then transfer that paint into "paint assemblages", extrude paint from modified syringes creating webbed paintings that resemble bent, colored wire, and most recently, to sling paint from ultra-fine straight pins, at very high speed, onto canvas. This mark’s defining characteristic is electric energy, but the incredibly fine nature of the mark is also striking. Beginning around 2006, I used this mark to create images of "the universe of mind and spirit" as I envisioned it, inspired by images of the physical universe produced by the Hubble space telescope. Three series resulted from that effort. All through this period, I wondered about mixing color optically by overlapping the fine skeins produced by this mark and eventually began a series to explore the matter. A series of seventeen paintings resulted from that first exploration of optical color mixing. I am now seventeen paintings into a new “IMP” series that also explores the optical mixing of color, although these paintings suggest energy condensing into matter to me (or mater exploding into energy), as well. For me, the magic of a painting is the fact that it’s just a piece of fabric with paint on it, yet it can create such magic. I want that to be more evident in these new pieces, right down to the raw, torn fabric around the outer edges.

Statement:

Fabio Tasso was born in Savona, Italy, in 1990. He completed a BFA in Genoa and a MFA in Sculpture in Carrara. Winner of numerous competitions, he participated in sculpture symposia, artistic residences and started his artistic activity between Europe and the United States. Since 2015 he has been a professor at the Fine Arts Academy in Genoa, teaching Life Drawing, Artistic Anatomy, Sculpture and Artistic Foundry. Fabio Tasso does Sculpture using self-made machinery built with low-cost components. The common point between them is the use of air, blown or sucked. The air, modelling a membrane, makes it lay down on multiple objects, wrapping them: when packaged, those become a single body. Producing like an industry, this machinery leaves sculptures in the world as “residues”. Even if the necessity that led to the creation of this system is unique, what the sculptor does could be done by anyone: the artist moves away from the ideas of “hand” and emotions in the creation of the artwork. The artist is inspired by the prehistoric sculptures that, often remaining incomprehensible to us due to the cultural and temporal distance, appears only as perfect shapes, made with the material, technology and sensibility of the time. Who was the prehistoric sculptor is not important. This is what the artist tries to do: anonymous but universal sculptures, made with the materials of today, that study the space, the shape and the relationship that our body has with these. For this reason, his works have no titles, but only cataloguing codes with all the information on the sculpture hidden. Without him, the only holder of the keys to read them, to codify them, it will be necessary to look for and hypothesize, as in a process of archaeological investigation.

Statement:

My artwork comes to me in reflecting on my travels abroad, fusing landscapes with geometric patterns. Central Asia and the Middle East are the source of my inspirations. Illuminations are omnipresent in my pieces as they express the essence of nature and the importance of precious metals. I work with metallic paints, pens, acrylics and oil pastels, pressing hard down on the canvas board, gouging out traces of my journey. Art for me is organic, instinctive and transportive and I connect to places physically through my medium.