paintings 2009

Inner conflict
Vincent Fantauzzo's Inner Conflict is a gateway, a key, to the many locked and imperceptible layers of creativity. Fantuazzo presents us with a narrative rich with history and easily stereotyped; that of the inner life of the artist. The much derided tortured and conflicted genius, struggling to express the weight of creation. However, these well worn conventions do not bear this work far.

Consider the amalgamation of history expressed here - figurative painting, an ages honed system of immense structure and space, alongside contemporary artistic discourse - the process of cognition. Fantuazzo builds us this bipolar landscape in order for us to grasp a true conflict that all those engaged in creative practice face; the weight of history and our ultimate lack of power over it and ourselves. Violence, raw animal instinct - this is our initial point of recognition for Inner Conflict. We recognize that which we know exists within in ourselves. But this is more than a simple depiction of extremes; who does not recognize the seated figure, head tilted, hands clasped. Fantauzzo's struggle is here, bare faced and unadorned; how far do we let ourselves go? Do we sit, as the detached voyeur, or do we lose ourselves in the process, in the moment of the literal and truly real occurring? In our darkest moments, are we approaching the sublime?

Fantuazzo depicts these questions in a tradition of staggering ability and vision. Actively engaged with the Italian renaissance's breakthroughs in light and perspective, Fantauzzo re-appropriates these epochal tools in order to illuminate a larger whole. We see an adrenaline fuelled, bare-knuckled brawl. Ultimately, this is a universal and wholly apt metaphor.

Whenever we create, we struggle. What is creation without struggle? We struggle against ourselves, against the past, against the limits of our cognitive horizons. Fantuazzo pulls us off the sidewalk and into the fight. And in letting ourselves go, surrendering to instinct and probing the architecture of our minds, we may actually glimpse the space of creativity. It is infinite.

via Dianne Tanzer Gallery