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THE PAINTED SPECTACLE

FRANK THEOPHANI CALLOZZO

My time and experience at El Sur has been an exercise in setting up a remote studio, or laboratory, which I have used to engage in play, and experiment while continuing my regular practice of daily drawing and painting.The time I’ve spent here has been a deepening of this daily practice, and an elongation of the time spent. The guiding principle of the studio play has been PLAY itself.

Drawing and creating color studies, linear compositions, quasi-geometric paintings on several scale. Whether on 8x11 sandpaper, larger format papers, and wall drawings on the residency property itself.

Currently I have been looking at and taking a great deal of inspiration from vintage board games, Pinball machines, and games of chance. Game boards like Parcheesi, Checkers, Chess and Sorry! mainly from the point of view of geometry, aesthetics, and the surfaces of the boards themselves. My creative practice includes figuration, as well as abstract, and non-objective modalities.

The context of my cohort at El Sur, with Mexico City herself as the container, and its multivalent art history has had a major impact on my work, both before attending this residency, and now on a deeper level as I have spent this time here in Tlalpan working and painting.

Folk Arts of Mexico, and their complex color relationships and application, the rich heritage of mural painting, and the vernacular traditions and practices of painted spaces, facades and homes are perpetually woven into my imagination.

This presentation I call “Painted Spectacle ”, presents the drawings and paintings I have made here in the studio during my residency at El Sur - the works are mostly on paper. It also includes the opportunity to see the site specific “wall drawings” on the property here at El Sur.

The wall works I created for this residency, although related to or inspired from the visual study of board game graphics, are nonetheless less very independent of them.They are simple 3 and 4 color compositions that have pseudo symmetry and balance, but are loose and wobbly nonetheless.

Immersed in the color field painting that is CDMX; I am compelled to engage in my practice of wall drawing or making small murals. As I made them I meditated upon the lineage of artists who have been touched by and touched Mexico, and its traditions of engaging color and space. Luis Barragan’s yellows, Josef Albers' panoply of color and color theory, James Turrell’s residency in Casa Gilardi , Rufino Tamayo’s pinks, reds, and greens, Frida’s blue. The wall drawings are quiet offerings to this conversation around color and space.

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