Emilio Pica – One AM @ Toronto

Emilio Pica – ONE AM

Emilio Pica (născut în 1934 la Brașov) locuiește în Toronto, Canada.
Expoziția ONE AM organizată la galeria ARTUNIT, Toronto se desfășoară în aprilie 2019. Sunt lucrări de grafică, pe hârtie executate în diferite tehnici, în anul 2018.

Romanian-born Canadian artist Emilio Pica expressed an interest in art early on: at age eight when he began assisting his muralist grandfather, Birt Pica. As Emilio came of age, he established an art practice parallel to a civil engineering career. His strikingly bold, energetic canvases, ranging from imaginative abstractions to life-painted landscapes, appeared regularly in solo and group exhibitions across Romania.
Since the mid-nineties, the prolific Pica’s consummate skill as a colourist and draftsperson has led to frequent international exhibitions, with his work represented by galleries in the United States, England, and Romania. He has exhibited at and been collected by The National Museum of Fine Art in Brasov, Transylvania, and he has been a frequent participant in the annual Art Expo, New York. Pica’s artwork is included in international collections in Germany, the United States, Japan, Columbia, Hong Kong, England, and Romania. And fortunately for Canadians, Emilio Pica’s work can be seen across Canada – in Montreal, Toronto, Edmonton, and Vancouver.

Text Earl Miller

Emilio Pica – One AM

One AM, Emilio Pica’s recent painting series, references the late night time when creativity typically strikes him. While inspired by a particular time, Emilio Pica’s paintings are ironically timeless for the universal message they convey. The flashes of light, pulses of raw energy, and ephemeral colour washes collectively highlight those spontaneous moments in life that thrill and move us.

Take for example the splash of light defining #53. This bright yellow swath backdrops a dark forest: one of those serendipitous moments the sun peeks out to light a bleak landscape. This everyday miracle draws us in to what are, in fact, complex, carefully-executed paintings.

The sunny colour field contrasts the gravitas of the painting’s foundational structure, which comprises black contours delineating clouds, ground, and trees. This juxtaposition of light and dark, just like the sharply contrasting reds and blues in #53 and #36, both abstractions of the human figure, reflect Hans Hofmann’s influential strategy of abstract painting that Hofmann called “push and pull,” or the juxtaposition of opposing tone and colour as the prime methodology for jarring abstract compositions.

Pica versatilely moves from landscape, to figure, and then to abstraction in works such as #28, which exhibit the stylistic consistency that permits him to work with this range of genres without losing visionary focus. Pica sets #28’s bold black diagonals and curves against a halo of white that provides generous breathing space and defines the painting’s “push and pull” dichotomy. That overall approach of building from contrast links Pica’s eclectic explorations, which are not only of different genres but also of sundry movements. Throughout this series, Pica looks to Cubism, Fauvism, early Modernism, Impressionism, and Abstract Expressionism. Certainly, Pica lives in postmodern times that allow him to choose at will from art history.

Emilio Pica synthesizes diverse, contrasting worlds. Lost in the pleasure of this resulting harmony, viewers can easily fall for the beautiful illusion of timeless unity as a refuge from the divisive, cacophonic world in which they live.