February 11, 2013

Please Sign In: The Fractal Drawings of Ray Vuoso

Adjacent to Life, Tinsquo's curatorial project, presents Please Sign In: The Fractal Drawings of Ray Vuoso.

Ray Vuoso crafts churning, fecund worlds in rigid, regimented environs. Using crayon, oil pastel and earnest investment, he creates works that seem to transcend scale: they read, alternately, as microscopic investigations of cellular life and as satellite views of teeming landscapes.

Please Sign In reveals Vuoso’s personal aim to cover every inch of paper with every visual idea he can conjure. This impulse derives to some extent from the unique scenario under which he works.

“For nearly 30 years I’ve worked as a security guard. The last few, I mostly work the nightshift in corporate lobbies. It’s a good job, gives me time to think and that turned into time to make art. I never set out to, it just happened on its own – doodles turned into faces, mostly in the newspaper margins. Eventually, I started bringing in my own paper and it went from there.”

Slowly evolving and obsessively rendered, the works are done on the sly with frequent interruptions. Vuoso recounts he chose his paper size because he could slip it into the desk binder if he had to conceal it rapidly.

“I like art. It’s relaxing and it’s a good place for my ideas. To my friends, I joke I’m a corporate lobby artist … but only literally.”

You can find the installation at Adjacent to Life, Tinsquo's pop-up gallery currently housed at Ninth Street Espresso (341 E. 10th Street at Ave B). It's on view through April 6.


images: oil pastel on paper, 11" x 8.5"

Posted by Mark Roth at 03:56 PM

February 01, 2013

Migratory Painter

Mark-Roth-Migratory-Painter.jpg
oil on canvas, 60” x 48”
Selected Preparatory Studies:
graphite on paper, 11" x 8"
Posted by Mark Roth at 12:22 AM