“Plastic Mound,” 2012, by Joseph Fucigna, plastic and metal
At first you notice chicken wire and assorted colors of fencing woven into a comfy rounded mesh suitable for a day care center.
Then you see a pieta lurking there and other reverential human forms, courtesy of Home Depot materials transformed by the work of sculptor and painter Joseph Fucigna.
His legerdemain is on display in “Ebb and Flow,” his new exhibition at the FRED.GIAMPIETRO Gallery in Erector Square.
“My Bunny Lies Over the Ocean,” 2012, by Valerie Brennan, oil on wood.
It’s paired with an equally absorbing show of paintings by Valerie Brennan called “No Chance of Rain.”
The shows run through Saturday. If you like to see the object or meaning of art works in a face-off with the materials of which they are made, this show’s for you.
Gallery owner Fred Giampietro champions in the art that he shows what he calls a “representational abstraction.” By that he means a representation of the objective world exists, if only as a touchstone for an abstracter working through of colors and shapes.
Click here for a previous story and Giampietro’s passionate take on other artists who have this quality..
Allan Appel Photo
Giampietro with Fucigna’s “Plastic Mound.”
In the case of Fucigna, Giampietro sees not only human forms cradling other human forms, but kneeling figures. Or they could be animals or anthropomorphic shapes.
In conversation with him about the work of Fucigna, who is also a painter, Giampietro invoked Jean Dubuffet, Henry Moore, and classical sculpture going back to the Renaissance.
What also gives him pleasure in this work is that Fucigna has achieved his transformation with materials from the hardware outlets.
You can see the history, or what Giampiertro calls the lineage of Fucigna’s work in Michelangelo marbles of hundreds of years ago, or Henry Moore in bronze 75 years ago.
Today Fucigna is doing it through fencing materials and chicken mesh.
“Here’s Joe going to Home Depot. He repurposes it to make art. It isn’t so obvious. You need to get close to see it. It’s hard to do. The materiality is obscured by the artistry,” he said.
The transformational tug of war between paint and painter or sculptor and his materials is at the heart of this show, and Brennan’s paintings in particular invite you to see paint in action.
Sofrin with Valerie Brennan’s “Fig Pink,” oil on wood.
Gallery manager Katie Sofrin said that in Brennan’s works like “Fig Pink” what impresses her is that “when you use that much color, it’s difficult to control.
“But she does a beautiful job, the way the paint plays with paint that’s dried and some that’s wet.”
“Fig Pink” by Brennan
She also noted that when the artist changes color in “My Bunny Lies Over the Ocean,” the paint thickens, it’s no longer at rest but vibrates.”
Other viewers might see in this work at first encounter not the materials, the paint, but the object or meaning emerging: Dare I say the top of a fabulous angel food cake, with the traces of a frosting knife deliciously front and center.
Or is that a lunar landscape seen impossibly from above?