Giacomo Viscardi

Giacomo Viscardi
Houston, Texas, USA

STATEMENT

For Giacomo Viscardi, collage begins in finding. It then meets destruction. With the cut of a razor blade, a character can be ripped from its original story, isolated and cast off from its world of meaning and tossed into the deep (or, a storage bag in the studio). Motivated by a fundamental belief that this part of the creative process mirrors the moments when our lives suddenly lose their narrative threads – i.e., when our worlds crumble about us and the constellations that once guided us home lead us into the dark, Viscardi transforms diverse images, textures, and materials from different continents and centuries into the collages making up the body of his work.

Thankfully, Viscardi holds, collage does not end in meaning’s breakdown. Viscardi believes collage is equally resurrective, asking in allegory: but what happens when we take the broken pieces of our lives and reconstruct with them? And so a bicycle rides amidst shooting stars and flying bottles of wine while birds swirl about dancers in the heavens; an inferno burns and beckons as Renaissance religious imagery is reborn in a cave amidst 1950s technologic dreams; French newspaper stands background to musical notes forming webs of entanglement; glamorous women from a mid-twentieth century franco-fashion lookbook catwalk against backgrounds of bold color; lacquer finishes, metallics, animals, and planes appear as a lone man is found adrift in the deep and a little girl surrounded by flower petals drifts into dreams in his debut exhibition, “What Dreams May Come.”

BIO

Giacomo Viscardi is a Houston-based collagist transforming found materials from his travels into pieces that allow us to see more deeply into our pasts, our presents, and our futures. Born and raised in Austin, Texas, he has never been formally trained. He earned degrees in philosophy and engineering. Diverse images, textures, and materials from different continents and centuries come together reimagined under Viscardi’s hand in his debut exhibition, “What Dreams May Come,” now showing in Houston, Texas.

ARTIST CONTACT

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IMAGES