Stephen Giannetti: Spectral Circumstance

Description

Marking his fifth solo exhibition at Marx & Zavattero, Bay Area painter Stephen Giannetti debuts a fresh take on his abstract color field work with a new series of acrylic on linen paintings January 21 – February 25, 2012. Through the extremely controlled use of spray paint, Giannetti’s new series weaves layers of spray into complex compositions that mirror sheer pixelated grids reading as atoms, particles, or cells. The translucency of this new technique effects an opulent, magnified space that transcends his earlier re-working of the modernist formulism for which he is best known.

Giannetti’s signature six-layer hand-painted circular variations of the past have evolved into a deeper eight-layer observation, revealing more of the artist’s meticulous process and affinity for the unexpected. Using only the same six colors – the three primary and three secondary, directly from the spray can – Giannetti highlights the negative spaces by precisely lining up poker chips in pre-determined grids and hitting his linen canvas with short, accurate blasts. The result is a further fracturing of light and an airiness not found in his earlier work.

Though Giannetti is still exploring the ideas of color mixing and light theory from the Pointillists to the Color field painters of the 1950s, the more alternative nature of the new spray works provides a wholly unique experience, as the viewer’s eye jumps from circle to circle, focal point to focal point, “mixing” the colors in their own ways. The spray patterns lend themselves to the blurring of woven color fields, and create a more intense visual experience as the eye adjusts to color and compositional shifts. This new exploration more readily calls to mind the work of light and space artists of the 1960s, prompting haunting visceral experiences like those of James Turrell, Helen Pashgian, and Robert Irwin, as well as the humming fluorescent light installations of Dan Flavin. Installed in the gallery in a series of primary color rows, grids, or single canvases, Giannetti’s paintings react to each other, creating a dynamic light and color experience for the viewer.

Giannetti’s work has been featured in several solo and group exhibitions, including Tomorrow’s Legacies: Gifts Celebrating the Next 125 Years, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento; Sea Change: The 10th Anniversary Exhibition, Marx & Zavattero, San Francisco; Selections from the Fine Arts Collection, Richard L. Nelson Gallery, Davis; icandy: Current Abstraction in Southern California, Cypress College Art Gallery, Cypress; Tilted Balance, Collectors Contemporary, Singapore; a solo show at Gallery 555 at the Oakland Museum of California at City Center; and the group exhibition Flatlanders (curated by Renny Pritikin) at Richard L. Nelson Gallery, University of California at Davis. His work was also featured in the traveling 2004/05 exhibition Neo Mod: Recent Northern California Abstraction, which originated at the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, and continued on to several other venues in California and Korea. Giannetti’s work has been written about in ARTnews, SF Weekly, Artweek, The Oregonian (in which his painting on display at The Affair @ The Jupiter art fair was singled out by critic Brian Libby as "one of the fair's most stunning works"), The Houston Post, and California Home & Design. His work is in the collections of the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, and Adobe Systems, San Jose. Giannetti received his MFA from the University of California at Irvine, did post-graduate work at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and received his BA from the University of California at Davis.

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