Studio 415
Anthony Viscardi
Anthony Viscardi
Medium: mixed medium/drawing
Artist Statement:
The practice of engaging the shadow as the progenitor of form has directed my architectural scholarship and artistic investigations for over twenty years. The shadow is born of one thing yet reveals another as its transparent and immaterial essence animates the surface upon which it falls. It is this phenomenological quality of the shadow, once severed from the object that ignites my imagination and informs my creative process.
The work of my most recent exhibitions, Shadowlandings, “Prints of Darkness, Shadow Cast Impressions” derive from a series of drawings, Tracing Time to Measure Space, in which I record the passage of time at three intervals—morning, noon and night—by sequentially tracing the shadow of an architectural object as it is constructed in one day’s time. The object is then dismantled, releasing the shadow to exist as a singular composite drawing of individual moments frozen into a single image, a “shadow map,” from which new iterations of the shadow may be formed. In this process, I use pencil on Mylar and purposely allow my hand to smear the graphite. Sections of the drawing are then erased to articulate highlights against the complex pencil wireframe. The resulting palimpsest retains the evidence of the process while revealing something new.
In the exhibition at The Williams Art Center in Easton, PA, the latent image of the shadow revealed in my drawings assumes new substance and form, translated through a variety of printmaking methods, including calligraphy, etching, silkscreen, viscosity, embossing, template airbrush, and laser cutting. Whereas my shadow drawings are projections of their objects, my prints became their inverse or reflection, shadow cast impressions—Prints of Darkness. In Shadowlandings, the 50 foot Art commission by the Allentown Art Museum, I was able to construct a full-scale shadow map that engaged the viewers as the shadows changed throughout the show. New shadows were generated by the 25 foot tail on a rolling scroll.
