Osvaldo Mariscotti: Krazy Lane

NEW YORK, NY - Upsilon Gallery is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of seminal works by Osvaldo Mariscotti titled Krazy Lane, on view from November 2 to December 30, 2023. The show will feature new paintings and works on paper by the artist. An opening reception will be held on November 2nd, 6:00-8:00 pm.

 

Osvaldo Mariscotti’s art is an art of fundamentals: color, line, and the possibilities inherent in their variation and repetition. Using this economy of means, Mariscotti creates an expressive world that draws on sources as diverse as nature, classical music, and the early pioneers of abstraction.

 

Stretching an analogy from landscape to architecture to painting, Mariscotti seems to associate volume with containment or confinement, an imposed organization and limitation of space. When only two of the four cardinal directions are open to the distant horizon, volume results, which can be experienced as a corridor or tunnel that would direct one’s movement, rather like a perspective box in a traditional painting. Interviewed in connection with his upcoming showing at Upsilon in NYC, he described his paintings as creating a “’space dome,’ the kind of feeling that one feels when one sees all four horizons. Then you know that you’re there… [that] you are involved as an actual physical thing in space.” This is perhaps the most important point. The kinds of landscape experience that interest Mariscotti result in the individual’s awareness of being corporeally present in a particular space, so that the “place” is as much a product of oneself as of the condition one confronts. “It’s something about you’re there alone,” Mariscotti explains. And even more revealing: “You’re not looking at anything [there’s not much to see]. But you yourself become very visible.”

 

To reiterate: with no relation, no direction, you are alone, you are visible – to yourself. This is being aware.

 

Relations are the essence of the “formal” art Mariscotti opposes. Aware of the relations, you would not be aware of yourself. Yet a landscape painting need not be devoid of all differentiated features (this might be an impossibility). Instead, it would have to be created without imposing a sense of order or hierarchy on its viewer. How does the “space-dome” appear then, materialized as a painting? Mariscotti suggests that the viewer of any of his works, whatever their format, would “feel the vertical dome-like vaults encompass him to awaken an awareness of his being alive in the sensation of complete space.” Verticality must have been a factor for Mariscotti even when he used a broad horizontal format, and even when he fantasized about the flattest expanses of landscape, because the human being is vertical. And, to be sure, nearly all of Mariscotti’s mature works display vertical bands.

 

The works in Krazy Lane evince the themes consistent through Mariscotti’s art: color, line, emotion, and time. Like a composer, Mariscotti develops these themes through an array of variations of a wide dramatic range: sometimes solemn, occasionally serene, oftentimes playful, always generously expressive.

 

Mariscotti has exhibited with prominent galleries internationally, and his work is included in major collections around the world including the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome; the Department of State, Washington, DC; the UBS Art Collection; the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Hagerstown, MD; the Asheville Art Museum; the Tampa Museum of Art; and the John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL, among many others.

 

On the occasion of Osvaldo Mariscotti: Krazy Lane, a full color exhibition catalogue will be published in collaboration with the artist, with contributing essay by Upsilon Gallery’s director, Marcelo Zimmler. For further information, please contact: info@upsilongallery.com.

 

Upsilon Gallery is located at 23 East 67th Street, New York, NY 10065. Exhibition hours are Tuesday to Friday 10:00 AM-6:00 PM, Saturday 10AM-5PM & by appointment. Please contact the gallery at (646) 476-4190 or email at info@upsilongallery.com for further details.