Featured Artist — Vincenzo Amicone



 

“The Glass of Wine”
Tribute to Johannes Vermeer
Oil on Canvas, 75 x 65 cm
2016



To give meaning to his “compressed” or “wavy” works, Amicone says we must leap into the world of the deconstructed image and the first historical avant-garde paintings, beginning with the analytical styles of the French and Italian artists of the second half the 19th century and early 20th century–the Macchiaioli, Impressionists, Pointillists and Divisionists, Cubists, Futurists, and so on. His interests lie in the contexts of these analytical forms. The figures he calls “compressed” or “wavy” represent the study of interpreting an image in the context of deformation. The change or variation of the image is a vision of the world that he has always loved and appreciated, leading him to investigate all artists and movements that share this approach.

His works represent objects, things, people, and life situations, in a changed form, where images are compressed and waved, as if the subjects are sucked into the composition itself and distorted. Metaphorically speaking, Amicone explains, contemporary man dissolves into his actions, into his environment, into context, and implodes into the act of becoming, becoming something not quite different, but not quite familiar either. Critics have pointed out the object-like quality of the human subjects in Amicone’s paintings, and the human-like presence of his objects.

For his Tribute Series, where Amicone reinterprets the works of Dutch Masters such as Vermeer, De Hooch, Elinga, and Metsu, Amicone attempts to synthesize work that encapsulates the historical and philosophical nature of a bygone era in today’s context. “I was struck by their soft and diaphanous light… unlike the Mediterranean light,” he says. “The compositions are simple, daily compositions, less dramatic, so unlike the Italian Caravaggism.”

Click Images to Enlarge

 



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Vincenzo Amicone was born in Antwerp, Belgium on September 21, 1969, and lives in Pettoranello di Molise, Italy. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and at the IAL Campobasso. You can find more information on his Facebook page.


Category : 16: September 2018
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