GIACINTO OCCHIONERO
Drop Through
April 18 - May 20

The gallery is delighted to present a solo exhibition of new paintings on plexiglass by Giacinto Occhionero.  This is the Rome, Italy-based artist's fifth solo exhibition at Kristen Lorello.  It develops his particular technique of reverse plexiglass painting and expands his abstract language of repeated circular motifs.

In 2014, Occhionero made a breakthrough in his artistic development following an artist residency he attended in Istanbul, Turkey.  Influenced by various public gardens he visited there, he began applying spray paint to transparent synthetic surfaces in small circular markings that lent his works an impressionistic feel.  Over time, the artist began to insert secondary and tertiary colors into the circular shapes and to layer planes of color behind these forms to suggest an environment of cellular, celestial, and oceanographic patterns.  In this new exhibition, Occhionero again expands the exploration of his own color-orb universe, stretching shapes into spheres that seem to liquefy, hover, and dart through a fantastical dimension.  New to the artist's vocabulary is an ovoid form that tapers to a point at one end.  It calls to mind the bulbous, crocheted forms of Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto and common things that either defy gravity or succumb to it: a balloon, leaf, teardrop, and drip of rain.

Throughout his investigation of medium and process, Occhionero has continued to uncover exciting ways of expressing depth.  These explorations have included varying the direction of motion in his paintings, separating frontal planes of painted circles and rear planes of washed color with an all-over clear spray, and incorporating the transparent plexiglass support into his compositions to show the viewer a way through the surface.  Now, Occhionero has introduced yet another layer into his works, that of the plexiglass itself.  Each painting in this exhibition includes two sheets of plexiglass, a front sheet painted only on its reverse and a rear sheet painted on both the front and back, enhancing the push-pull of elements that appear to press forward and scuttle back.

Giacinto Occhionero was born in Campobasso Italy in 1975 and attended the Accademia delle belle arti in Rome.  He lives and works in Rome.  His paintings have been exhibited at Kristen Lorello, NY, the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino, Italy, 68 Projects, Berlin, Germany, Z20 Gallery/Sara Zanin, Rome, Italy, and Kou Gallery, Rome, Italy among other venues.  Collections include the Capital Group, Los Angeles, CA, and the Collezione Banca Profilo, Milan, Italy, among many others.