NYAB Event - Lucio Pozzi "The Twain Minipaintings"

Lucio Pozzi "The Twain Minipaintings"

CREON Gallery

This event has ended.

I don't remember when I started painting the Minipaintings. They came about in the early seventies as a counterpart to very large works I was producing, to capture in my mind the size of the surface I paint on as a crucial factor of my practice.

Over the years, they have evolved in various manners. Many exhibitions of the Minipaintings have been held worldwide, also because I can carry a whole exhibition in a suitcase. Strangely, each single Minipainting demands a large wall space, often more than a larger work would. Instead of the painting being hung on a wall, it's a wall activated by the painting.

Most Minipaintings consist of a thin canvas stretched on a thick block of plywood more or less the size of a hand. In this new 'Twain' group, after staining the canvas with a faint wash which is seen from the sides, I apply masking tape to divide the face of the painting and with a palette knife I spread thick paint on the left or upper half. After removing the tape I spread a different color on the other half, fastidiously coming as near as possible to the first half but leaving a hair of a gap between them. Finally I apply as small as I can dots of the color of one side onto the other and vice versa – a kind of territorial exchange. The contrast between the two fields of color is answered by the almost invisible presence of the dots.

- Lucio Pozzi