Diego Perrone
"Self Portraits"
Casey Kaplan
New York, 121 West 27th Street
Born in the northern Italian town of Asti where he still lives and works, Diego Perrone finds inspiration in various Modernist movements of his origins, such as Futurism and Arte Povera. Equally concerned with materials’ tactile and subliminal cruxes, Perrone builds amorphous sculptures in glass as well as works on paper that recall his eerie and anatomical sculptural aesthetic. Trapped between human and beast-like qualities, Perrone’s figures transfer mental and physical dualities through their unsettled forms. Akin to masks donned in Italian commedia, the artist’s figures seem to possess facial attributes while slowly morphing into abstraction.
Perrone’s Casey Kaplan exhibition Self Portraits includes a series of glass cast sculptures blending bodily details with fluid abstraction in bright colors such yellow and green. The joyous tones the artist uses to blanket his otherwise abject sculptures contrast with his unfamiliar and voluminous sculptures. Nature, one of the recurring themes in the artist’s practice, plays a key role in his biro on paper drawings of fish in bold red hues. Incorporating elements from his hometown’s cultural and natural texture, Perrone utilizes visual landscape of Asti especially in his photographic work for which he captures local territories and residents in uncanny scenarios.
Diego Perrone, Untitled, 2016 Glass casting Photo_ Andrea Rossetti Courtesy the artist and Casey Kaplan, New York
“The impulse to chase down the references, concepts and information etched within a piece of art – which might somehow justify its logical or narrative operation – is such an obvious practice that we end up in a rather complicated position as viewers when, as with the work of Diego Perrone, we find ourselves constantly grappling with the feeling that we’ve made an error in judgement, rather than finding the key to any confirmation or reassurance that there is an internal structure that follows a shared logic,” states Antonio Scoccimarro in his Mousse Magazine article about Perrone’s work.
On view through February 12, 2017
