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Pair in Process
InLiquid is pleased to present the work of Jorge Caliguri and Chris Curchin at Hyatt Centric in celebration of Pride. Both artists work in abstraction. Caliguri’s methodical architectural approach is encaustic and fresco, versus Curchin’s methodology, which is more organic, random texture-making in oil paint. As a married couple, it’s interesting to see that despite how the work's materiality differs, a playful dialogue emerges between the two artists exploring shape, space, and color.
In 2020, out of necessity at the onset of the pandemic they unexpectedly began to share studio space. They have never shown their work side by side. Art can be a product but it is also by-product: of experience and process. Pair in Process presents reflections in proximity.
Chris Curchin began experimenting with abstraction in 1995 and developed the sgraffito technique, the scratch work, out of a need to delete the sense of representation. The evolution of this process uses randomness as a foundational element. Mark-making in wet ground before painting yields a surface that requires response and improvisation; control and happenstance. In the recycled box forms presented here the initial recycling and erratic randomness of shape and tearing resulted in irregular surfaces for experimentation. Because they were never intended as finished products to be seen they exist as relics of experience; like manuscripts telling the story of the process, the history of the elements and their recycling/creation.
Jorge Caligiuri’s body of work here is developed in fresco medium. In taking a modern approach to the traditional secco process, Caligiuri uses experimentation and serendipity to fuse layers and textures. Shapes and patterns accumulate and recede in the process. The outcome is never certain. Using fundamental elements; line, shape, curve, angle, circle and triangle in an improvised geometry he finds liberation in process and the surface’s constant change; reflecting his interest in transience and the fragility of matter over time.
The work on display here experiments with negative space, shaped surfaces, and angles removed.
Join InLiquid for a "Meet the Artists" reception on Wednesday, May 15, from 6 - 8 pm.
About the artists
Jorge Caligiuri is an Argentinian artist, architect and designer. Born in Argentina of Italian heritage, he attended the National School of Fine Arts Prilidiano Pueyrredon (UNA) in Buenos Aires (1980), and studied architecture at the University of Buenos Aires (1992). He worked for many years and traveled the world as an interior designer in the fashion Industry.
He moved to the United States in 2000 and began to paint as a solo endeavor. He has exhibited his work in galleries in Philadelphia, New York , Miami and Washington, DC and has work in many private collections. He currently lives and works in Philadelphia. Caligiuri create his art work in two mediums, fresco and encaustic. Combining ancient techniques with a modern vocabulary, he creates surfaces and textures from plaster, tempera, bee’s wax and pigments.
His aesthetic language investigates painting at an intersection between design, architecture and geometry inspired by texture, perceptions of aging, transience and resilience, and influenced by shapes and patterns found in urban landscapes and nature, The artist says: “In my art work I often think of drawing in space, a multi-layered process exploring fundamental elements: of line, color, surface, shape and form.”
Chris Curchin was born in Rochester NY and studied film and animation in an experimental film program at Philadelphia College of Art, now University of the Arts earning a BFA in 1982. A self taught painter, he began painting in 1985, showed regularly and helped run the Highwire Co-operative through the 90’s and has exhibited work at the Allentown Art Museum, William Way Center and The Philadelphia Art Alliance among others. Recent shows include Upheaval; a solo show at Boston Street Gallery in Philadelphia and The Art of Healing at The Samaritan Center in Vorhees, NJ.
He currently teaches art and music at a non-profit arts-based preschool in Philadelphia. Curchin works primarily in oils. Forgoing brushwork for a sgraffito method, he uses slow drying oils and works wet using a collection of nubs: bamboo, bone, stick, nail, even dental tools. The mark-making has elements of compulsion but also precision, randomness and abandon that contrast with the formal structural elements.
