Gina Occhiogrosso: The Absence of Presence
January 21 - February 21, 2020
Opening Reception: Tuesday, January 21, 3-5pm
Artist's Statement
The current political, social, and environmental flux invades us in our everyday lives in the form of images. What if these objects, figures, and architecture were removed from their landscape, so we might truly see what we are going to lose? What if we all disappear? I am interested in creating a space in my work that is untethered and ambiguous and where one is unable to discern between form and space.
While my work is made within the realm of abstract painting, I connect to the everyday by incorporating everyday processes, like sewing, or familiar materials like fabric and yarn. I am interested in the way the work can be viewed at so many levels, each distance confronting something new. I like the visual language of a seam, where mark is interrupted, or where the hidden seams are seen through the back of the painting and become a visual element. There are chance encounters where disparate forms combine or pull apart, and new relationships are created
The addition of sewing, cake decorating or weaving are sometimes used to further expose painting’s illusion and deception, and to give importance and relevance to typically feminine materials and processes.
Drawing and collage are vital to my practice. They both inform the paintings and stand alone as discrete works. Cutting within the practice of collage, can makes the invisible, visible, revealing a new, unexpected reality. There is a freedom, surprise and anxious anticipation when making new connections within its process. Drawing helps to work out ideas of space and mark.
About the Artist
Gina Occhiogrosso graduated with her BFA in Painting from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She went on to graduate with an MFA in Painting from SUNY Buffalo in Buffalo, NY. She has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibits and is currently an Associate Professor of Art in the Center for Art and Design at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York.
