Carlo Proietto “Fired Creations”
Onishi Gallery
This event has ended.
Onishi Project presents Italian artist Carlo Proietto in a solo show, “Fired Creations”. This innovative exhibition highlights the rare art of pyrography, or, the decoration of wood or leather with heated tools or flame. While the tradition of writing and creating images with heated tools may be traced back to the Middle Ages, modern technologies have enabled new pyrographic techniques that allow for increasingly delicate and layered creations. The combination of inlay, indentations, and polychrome in contemporary pyrographic artwork has opened a door to a whole new world of searing creativity.
Carlo Proietto was born in San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy in 1976 and graduated from the Italian Academy of Fine Arts in 2002. His fascination with pyrographic arts was cultivated from a young age as he grew up in a family of artists, and it has continued to grow throughout his work as a printer in an engraving laboratory, and as a teacher of pyrography and pyroengraving to high schools students for eight years. In each of these environments, he has increasingly engaged with the material, intellectual, and creative properties of this unusual method of engraving whose tool of trade he said has “a precision and power that I’ve never found using any other medium.” Proietto has found the versatility of the hot iron to enable a self-expression distinct from that of other creative media, and he explores the range of its capabilities through his contemporary design.
Through the transformative power of fire, Proietto’s work features largely monochromatic portraits and surreal scenes of urban drama. His images are etched with intention and strength, the whole images reaching beyond their graphic parts and into the realm of symbolic meaning. Stark industrial landscapes and intense human expressions convey messages, both verbal and visual, about the relationships between chaos and order, nature and industry, pain and pleasure, reason and emotion. Inspired by contemporary music, video games, and cartoons, Proietto uses clean lines and meaningful contrasts of light and shadow to lend futuristic auras and pop-art qualities to his haunting visual critiques of the modern day. Channeling one of the most powerful and destructive natural elements for his creative expression, Proietto elevates fire to fine art.
Carlo Proietto has published two books on pyrography as a contemporary art form, and currently lives and works in Foggia, Italy.
Media
Schedule
from June 20, 2013 to July 03, 2013
Opening Reception on 2013-06-20 from 18:00 to 20:00