David Pappaceno

September 15 - October 21, 2006

Opening Reception: Friday, September 15, 7 - 9:30 pm

Download Press release PDF with images

(NEW!)See images of EVERY Painting Here

Opening pictures ( photos by Mari Blanchard )

Listen to the Artist's Talk ( featuring David Pappaceno )

David Pappaceno, " A Cardiogenic Fugue" (2006)(detail) oil on canvas 60 x 48 inches

Visit the Artist's website

Green Street Gallery is proud to present the first solo exhibition of paintings by David Pappaceno. David creates large paintings that are as compositionally complex as they are entertaining. The elaborate paintings reference mythology, art history and contemporary life with equal vigor. The artist’s control of perspective and foreshortening pushes looping chains of tumbling nude figures deep into the space beyond the picture plane. These intensely colored orbits somehow combine a high brow Jackson Pollock drip gesture with the gruff, low brow sexuality of R. Crumb. Personal and self-referential imagery such as the artist’s open head and buildings from the streets of his Somerville neighborhood, tame the crazy elliptical movement of these five, six and seven foot canvases just enough to make them strangely believable.

David Pappaceno, "Private Debts, Public Notes" (2006) oil on canvas 60 x 48 inches

The raw creative energy and humor of these works is tempered and choreographed by Pappaceno’s masterful brushwork and use of specific narrative features. By distorting and shifting some of these realistic elements, even a version of the side of the stretched canvas itself, images become psychedelic trompe l'oeil versions of themselves, compressing and expanding the visual space in unexpected ways. When the viewer is drawn to the surfaces –to read the writing or to make out tiny details–the larger forms around them dissolve into a sea of pointillist brushstrokes of textured color.

David Pappaceno, "Gallatea and Balf" (2006) (detail) 72 x 60 inches

The rich mix of visual elements is truly awe-inspiring; sea turtles, celebrities, cartoon brushstrokes and thought bubbles, cupids, voluptuous goddesses, technicolor sunsets, street scenes, houses and big bulging eyeballs all vie for our attention. Rarely have these disparate elements: text, realistic figures, high-key coloration and graphic gesture, been combined so cohesively to describe such a personal vision.

David Pappaceno, " Pepto Dismol" (2005) (detail) 60 x 48 inches