Antonio Occulto “HEADS” commentary by H.W Gibson

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Having a background in figure painting, mono-printing and figure sculpture, (bronze casting and ceramics); I have been wanting to write a post of this exquisite work. I am amazed at the tender quality in these deeply gestured, sculpted and prolific “workings”. Antonio Occulto is, in my view, the true draftsman. It is this kind of quite rare skill that can flicker a commeration, as it points at our most delicate, precious, beautiful and vilified metis of humanness. His work is classical; remenants, of Greco-Roman portraits, silhouettes of Michelangelo’s last sculptures, yet in a Vito Acconci fashion. Each color glows like a fire in a portable mask; simaltaneously showing the whole design of are”heads”; our creatureness. In quick subtle movement, a small line of pigment is lifted off, revealing both the bewildering moment of our own evolutionary “being” that is pouring out helplessly into an expression, numbered an artistic form. The artist has let go, almost as if a posture-ed model has stepped outside, the lines of rendition, for a  second, and in that stagger, out slips real form. Caught with hands, it feels that he is… holding the “camera” on a finger trigger and then presses down on the last flash of light, so the clip is framed, couching the surrounding air, just as the door swings shut. The shadow of a head, has lingered in a dancestep, just long enough, in the artist’s darkroom, to uncover it’s uninjured fragility. The zip-locked tracing of the being– caught in the archives of  his vision. A drawing, a sculpture, a painting made.

Occulto’s Paintings can be seen alongside his other talents and background:

All copyrights reserved:

http://scratchandcolour.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/head65/