Artists have been known to use their bodies in creative ways. Jackson Pollock is one of the better known examples, with his muscular style of paint flinging. And then there’s someone like Janine Antoni, whose “Lick & Lather” series was made by either licking or lathering busts molded out of chocolate and soap. (You can guess which was performed on which.) Newcomer Tony Oricco falls in this camp of artists pushing the idea of ‘body as tool’ to an extreme. His first solo show, consisting of human scale spirograph-style drawings, opens next week at the Shoshana Wayne Gallery in Santa Monica.
Unlike the reclusive Pollock, Orrico, a trained dancer from Illinois, makes performance an important component of his drawings. Each one is made by a choreographed set of gestures, repeated or improvised, over an extend period of time — anything between a few minutes and several hours. The “Penwald: 4: unison symmetry standing” series took place over the course of three consecutive evenings, his longest to date.
Orrico’s performances are certainly fun to watch, but what’s left over at the end, the record of the dance on paper, is equally enchanting. Within each drawing there is both mindfulness and mindlessness, but that’s life, no?
Shoshana Wayne Gallery is located at 2525 Michigan Avenue #B1 in Santa Monica. The Tony Orrico show is on May 28 through July 9. Opening reception Saturday, May 28 from 5–7 pm.
© 2010-2011. TABLET TALK IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE TEAM AT TABLET.