Nina Rizzo
Artist Statement
The concepts by which the structure and dimensionality of space are described are often contradictory and bitterly contested. These conflicts lead to an individual portrayal and subjective perception of spatiality. Because many are so radically new, they are frequently beyond the visual grasp of an individual at any time, calling for sketches and drawings, geometric constructions, diagrams, and painting models. Imagined locations give precedence to a looser and shifting understanding of spatial experience. This current, increased sense of possibility liberates images from singular understanding. With the awareness that all time-space perception is a construct of the mind, these images find the freedom to shape individual imaginary places.
Walls, blocks, icebergs, rocks, plants and patches of turf encapsulate, occupy and generate the emptiness in between and around them. Space and place are investigated, through the forms present. Paint exists, in these images, so that its physicality becomes part of the constructions in the work. Stripes, usually understood as two-dimensional forms, transform into solid structure as they arc, twist, turn, and support other elements. At times the images melt back into dripping paint, both static and mobile. The individual components and movements in each work create potential for the image’s space to respond to and pressure the planes describing it. Flat pattern and active, loose marks battle three-dimensional illusion as these constructions attempt to occupy their place as solid elements. The reference to structures and natural forms create tension where surface competes with depth, and image competes with abstraction. The space and place of these images are a result of the build up and manipulation of this visual information. The appearance of the forms in these images is both undermined and reaffirmed by their liquid physicality. The two dimensional media of painting and drawing have long endeavored to generate an illusion of space in accordance with general perceptions. The accumulation and dislocation of the structures and shapes in my work, along with the intensity of exaggerated light and color, allow the images to investigate how this liberation gives importance to the internalized experiences and emotions that transform and give fluidity to our understanding of places.
Nina Rizzo at the Linda Warren Gallery
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