Caio Fonseca : Paintings on Canvas and Paper

From August 14 through September 29, 2008 The Drawing Room in East Hampton is pleased to present "Caio Fonseca: paintings on canvas and paper". The exhibition, which is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue, presents a lyrical body of work painted over the last year in Pietrasanta, Italy where Fonseca has had a studio since 1985. A native New Yorker, Fonseca divides his time between Italy and New York, using his East Hampton studio in the off seasons. This is his first solo show in the Hamptons.

In this recent work comprising large and small mixed media paintings on canvas and on paper, Fonseca’s distinctive method of image making finds complete expression. The son of a sculptor and a painter, Fonseca learned early the importance of his materials to his imagery. Constructing images using the physical material of his media - gesso, acrylic paint, gouache and wax – and various tools - brushes, pie cutters, pasta rollers, and composer’s nibs - his paintings evoke a personal imagined space.

Specifically, Fonseca has evolved a technique whereby the memory of an underpainting charged with vivid color and broad gesture is eclipsed by an off white over painting which preserves oddly shaped partial views of the original painted ground. Inevitably, the composition becomes a palimpsest of visual evidence from a different moment of painting.  Simultaneously modern and classical, each painting records its own history in a unique rhythm of found and created visual events.

See below for full press release and selected works.