The Banquet Painting

My recent paintings have to do with spectacle, reality versus illusion and hiding ones face behind a mask. Sometimes I use the Commedia dell Arte and at others the Rococo masquerade motif. My work points toward a theatricality of life and especially the contemporary art world. I am interested in theater because it accentuates the kaleidoscope of persona that are flowing through each human being and the intrigue that takes places in the relationships between people. Not long ago, the idea of humor as a healthy method of relieving the incongruity of life and a sort of rebellion against the seriousness and cynicism that surrounds us began to take shape in my mind. While the character of the fool crystallized as the hero of our time. It was then that I discovered the Commedia dell Arte and realized what a well spring of rich subject matter can be found in this multi colored festival of fools, overflowing with irony and farce. It was Harlequin that drew me to the Commedia at first. Almost everyone is familiar with this character. He is the joker, or clown that wears tights with colorful diamond shapes on them and can be seen on the paintings of Picasso, cheap advertisements, the circus, in puppet shows, and is generally part of the thousands of images that we as a society share collectively. The Commedia as well as a revisiting of Rococo, provides a humorous outlet from a situation where people see themselves and each other as somehow fragmented and puppet-like. While the tendency toward theatricality and artifice presents a variety of ways to express the ambiguity and mystery of life. Also, an important contribution of the Commedia dell Arte and Rococo to the contemporary art scene is that it is a way out of a modern dilemma regarding our ambivalence towards kitsch and our inability to transcend irony, as it foreshadows the tension between "high" and "low" art that is so prevalent today.