Mixed Media Painting by Steven Colucci

Steven Colucci’s iconoclastic approach to performance and the visual arts have not only long blurred the boundaries between these disciplines, but have challenged its most basic assumptions. The title of this show references a most rudimentary dance move --the plié --and our assumptions of what to expect in relation to this. Also the suggestion that we can simply press a button and a preconceived outcome will be courteously delivered --a form of prefabricated belief in itself. Steven Colucci’s artwork turns such basic assumptions on their heads. Finding early inspiration in the New York school of abstract expressionists such as Jackson Pollock with his action painting, and then further by his professor --a then young Vito Acconci while studying at the School of Visual Arts, Steven Colucci went from exploring the raw existentialist experimentation of New York’s early painting and performance scenes, to investigating the other end of the spectrum --the rigorously measured and controlled disciplines of pantomime and ballet; studying in Paris under the tutelage of world-famous Marcelle Marceau, and engaging with the concepts of dramatic movement pioneer and intellectual Etienne Decroux. Colucci has explained the difference between the extremes of pantomime and dance as being that pantomime forces movement via an internal capacity --movement directed inward to the core of one’s self --a source requiring extreme mental and physical control. Dance by contrast is an external expression; likewise requiring great precision, although instead an extension of self or sentiment that projects outwardly. While such historical ‘movement’ disciplines serve as foundation blocks for Steven’s artistic explorations, it is the realm in between that he is best known for his contributions --an experimental movement and performance art that simultaneously honors, yet defiantly refutes tradition; rejecting a compartmentalization regarding art and movement, yet incorporating its elements into his own brand of experimental pastiche. Colucci’s performance works manifest as eerily candy-coated and familiar, yet incorporate unexpected jags of the uncanny throughout, exploiting a sort of coulrophobia in the viewer; an exploration of a cumulative artifice that binds human nature against its darker tendencies; highlighting traditions of artifice itself - the fabricated systemologies that necessitate compartmentalization in the first place. It is evident in Steven Colucci’s paintings that he has established a uniquely distinctive pictorial vocabulary; a strong allusion to --or moreso an extension of --his performance works. Colucci’s paintings depict a sort of kinetic spectrum, or as he refers to them “a technical expression of physicality and movement”. Whereas the French performance and visual artist Yves Klein used the human body as a “paint brush” to demarcate his paintings and thereby signify a residue of performance, Colucci’s utilization of nonsensical numbers and number sequences taken from dance scores, as well as heat- induced image abstraction depicting traces of movement likewise inform his vocabulary. In the strand of the choreographed, yet incorporating moments of chance, Colucci’s paintings represent an over arching structure; a rhythm of being and state, yet detail erratic moments --moments that denote a certain frailty --the edge of human stamina. Colucci’s paintings dually represent a form of gestural abstraction --and also the reverse of this --a unique anthropomorphization of varying states of movement – that sometimes present as a temperature induced color field, at others are juxtapositions of movement and depictions of physical gestural images themselves. Colucci’s use of vernacular and found materials such as cardboard evoke his mastery of set design, and also reference a sort of collective experience of urbanity and the ephemeral. Such contradictions seem to permeate not only Steven Colucci’s artwork, but also are reflected in his person – one who grew up in New York’s Bronx during a zeitgeist moment in visual and performing arts in the 1960s – one who shifts with ease from happenings and experiments in New York City, to his meticulously choreographed megaproductions at Lincoln Center or starring in the Paris ballet...

Steven Colucci is a perfectionist. As a painter, he describes himself as “a dictator, a controlling ballet master with a stick,” dispassionately choreographing his composition to achieve the exact result he desires. The paintings of the “Sea Series,” largely completed in 2010, are actually the culmination of 4-5 years of practice for the artist, during which he consistently developed and refined the language and formal elements that visually distinguish the series, sometimes repeating the same image for months until he was satisfied. Colucci’s methods and philosophy reflect his experience with movement as a performing art. While he studied with and admires Vito Acconci, Colucci is no proponent of conceptualism, finding his voice in the intense discipline of traditional forms, explaining, “If you don’t practice art like a classical pianist, every day, you can’t execute your concepts.” After completing his studies at New York’s School of Visual Arts, he moved to Paris, where he studied and performed mime and ballet, working closely with Marcel Marceau, who also painted, and Etienne Decroux, a sculptor as well as the originator of the form “classical mime,” which has roots in the sculpture of Rodin. If the word “sea” in the title of a painting conjures for you images of little easels and landscape canvases featuring sandy beaches, waves, and vast horizons, think again – Colucci’s oceanic visions are experiential, viewing them you are often looking down at the sea, within it, or even dreaming of the ocean. Water, deep or shallow, still or fast-moving, rules how we see light and subjects, as the artist works to reflect what he calls “the spirit, the soul of the water.” In “Deep Blue,” he conjures this anima via a window through levels of roiling currents of rich dark waves and dancing highlights, inviting the viewer to experience the sea as a vibrant and enveloping sensual entity. Colors, too, differ from the subdued palette of the seaside afternoon painter. Often his choices originate in what Colucci describes as the rhythm of color present in Afro-Carribean art and design. In the paintings, these hues express the water’s likeness to the seamless flow of the Dominican culture’s music and dance, which he so enjoys during frequent visits to Upper Manhattan’s El Barrio district, a movement with the melodic line that he so simply and perfectly employs in the delightfully sexy “Swimming with the Fish.” As our bodies, like the sea, are largely water, Colucci’s water visions...

Steven Colucci’s iconoclastic approach to performance and the visual arts have not only long blurred the boundaries between these disciplines, but have challenged its most basic assumptions. The title of this show references a most rudimentary dance move --the plié --and our assumptions of what to expect in relation to this. Also the suggestion that we can simply press a button and a preconceived outcome will be courteously delivered --a form of prefabricated belief in itself. Steven Colucci’s artwork turns such basic assumptions on their heads. Finding early inspiration in the New York school of abstract expressionists such as Jackson Pollock with his action painting, and then further by his professor --a then young Vito Acconci while studying at the School of Visual Arts, Steven Colucci went from exploring the raw existentialist experimentation of New York’s early painting and performance scenes, to investigating the other end of the spectrum --the rigorously measured and controlled disciplines of pantomime and ballet; studying in Paris under the tutelage of world-famous Marcelle Marceau, and engaging with the concepts of dramatic movement pioneer and intellectual Etienne Decroux. Colucci has explained the difference between the extremes of pantomime and dance as being that pantomime forces movement via an internal capacity --movement directed inward to the core of one’s self --a source requiring extreme mental and physical control. Dance by contrast is an external expression; likewise requiring great precision, although instead an extension of self or sentiment that projects outwardly. While such historical ‘movement’ disciplines serve as foundation blocks for Steven’s artistic explorations, it is the realm in between that he is best known for his contributions --an experimental movement and performance art that simultaneously honors, yet defiantly refutes tradition; rejecting a compartmentalization regarding art and movement, yet incorporating its elements into his own brand of experimental pastiche. Colucci’s performance works manifest as eerily candy-coated and familiar, yet incorporate unexpected jags of the uncanny throughout, exploiting a sort of coulrophobia in the viewer; an exploration of a cumulative artifice that binds human nature against its darker tendencies; highlighting traditions of artifice itself - the fabricated systemologies that necessitate compartmentalization in the first place. It is evident in Steven Colucci’s paintings that he has established a uniquely distinctive pictorial vocabulary; a strong allusion to --or moreso an extension of --his performance works. Colucci’s paintings depict a sort of kinetic spectrum, or as he refers to them “a technical expression of physicality and movement”. Whereas the French performance and visual artist Yves Klein used the human body as a “paint brush” to demarcate his paintings and thereby signify a residue of performance, Colucci’s utilization of nonsensical numbers and number sequences taken from dance scores, as well as heat- induced image abstraction depicting traces of movement likewise inform his vocabulary. In the strand of the choreographed, yet incorporating moments of chance, Colucci’s paintings represent an over arching structure; a rhythm of being and state, yet detail erratic moments --moments that denote a certain frailty --the edge of human stamina. Colucci’s paintings dually represent a form of gestural abstraction --and also the reverse of this --a unique anthropomorphization of varying states of movement – that sometimes present as a temperature induced color field, at others are juxtapositions of movement and depictions of physical gestural images themselves. Colucci’s use of vernacular and found materials such as cardboard evoke his mastery of set design, and also reference a sort of collective experience of urbanity and the ephemeral. Such contradictions seem to permeate not only Steven Colucci’s artwork, but also are reflected in his person – one who grew up in New York’s Bronx during a zeitgeist moment in visual and performing arts in the 1960s – one who shifts with ease from happenings and experiments in New York City, to his meticulously choreographed megaproductions at Lincoln Center or starring in the Paris ballet...

Steven Colucci’s iconoclastic approach to performance and the visual arts have not only long blurred the boundaries between these disciplines, but have challenged its most basic assumptions. The title of this show references a most rudimentary dance move --the plié --and our assumptions of what to expect in relation to this. Also the suggestion that we can simply press a button and a preconceived outcome will be courteously delivered --a form of prefabricated belief in itself. Steven Colucci’s artwork turns such basic assumptions on their heads. Finding early inspiration in the New York school of abstract expressionists such as Jackson Pollock with his action painting, and then further by his professor --a then young Vito Acconci while studying at the School of Visual Arts, Steven Colucci went from exploring the raw existentialist experimentation of New York’s early painting and performance scenes, to investigating the other end of the spectrum --the rigorously measured and controlled disciplines of pantomime and ballet; studying in Paris under the tutelage of world-famous Marcelle Marceau, and engaging with the concepts of dramatic movement pioneer and intellectual Etienne Decroux. Colucci has explained the difference between the extremes of pantomime and dance as being that pantomime forces movement via an internal capacity --movement directed inward to the core of one’s self --a source requiring extreme mental and physical control. Dance by contrast is an external expression; likewise requiring great precision, although instead an extension of self or sentiment that projects outwardly. While such historical ‘movement’ disciplines serve as foundation blocks for Steven’s artistic explorations, it is the realm in between that he is best known for his contributions --an experimental movement and performance art that simultaneously honors, yet defiantly refutes tradition; rejecting a compartmentalization regarding art and movement, yet incorporating its elements into his own brand of experimental pastiche. Colucci’s performance works manifest as eerily candy-coated and familiar, yet incorporate unexpected jags of the uncanny throughout, exploiting a sort of coulrophobia in the viewer; an exploration of a cumulative artifice that binds human nature against its darker tendencies; highlighting traditions of artifice itself - the fabricated systemologies that necessitate compartmentalization in the first place. It is evident in Steven Colucci’s paintings that he has established a uniquely distinctive pictorial vocabulary; a strong allusion to --or moreso an extension of --his performance works. Colucci’s paintings depict a sort of kinetic spectrum, or as he refers to them “a technical expression of physicality and movement”. Whereas the French performance and visual artist Yves Klein used the human body as a “paint brush” to demarcate his paintings and thereby signify a residue of performance, Colucci’s utilization of nonsensical numbers and number sequences taken from dance scores, as well as heat- induced image abstraction depicting traces of movement likewise inform his vocabulary. In the strand of the choreographed, yet incorporating moments of chance, Colucci’s paintings represent an over arching structure; a rhythm of being and state, yet detail erratic moments --moments that denote a certain frailty --the edge of human stamina. Colucci’s paintings dually represent a form of gestural abstraction --and also the reverse of this --a unique anthropomorphization of varying states of movement – that sometimes present as a temperature induced color field, at others are juxtapositions of movement and depictions of physical gestural images themselves. Colucci’s use of vernacular and found materials such as cardboard evoke his mastery of set design, and also reference a sort of collective experience of urbanity and the ephemeral. Such contradictions seem to permeate not only Steven Colucci’s artwork, but also are reflected in his person – one who grew up in New York’s Bronx during a zeitgeist moment in visual and performing arts in the 1960s – one who shifts with ease from happenings and experiments in New York City, to his meticulously choreographed megaproductions at Lincoln Center or starring in the Paris ballet...

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