| Mixolydian 5 79 x 115cm
"At a time of unprecedented wealth and stability in the industrialized world, the plight of modern man is often dismissed as a product of existential angst. As a result, artists who explore this dilemma find themselves pathologized by critics and connoisseurs alike. This is unfortunate, as the void that confronts the artist who wishes to enunciate such a condition is regarded as being too 'complex' or indeed driven by ideas not images.
Franco Paisio is such an artist. Over a lifetime of exploring his inner world in relation to the outer, he has managed to deepen our understanding of those significant issues that govern our lives. Mortality, spontaneity, the polarities of our emotions, the sense of resuscitating the vitality of each moment as a way of intensifying our relationship to life - these are but some of of the processes that inform his work as he endeavors to focus upon age-old paradoxes within the human condition itself.
Through the use of a sinuosity of colour and a careful rendering of abstract forms, derived from his inheritance as an Italian, Paisio alerts us to the symbolic power that may be realized when gloom is contrasted with light. He is not afraid to ask this question: Is joy not a tenebrous experience, a momentary bliss emerging from the shadows of disjunction and artifice?
The fission, of course, he presents us with. At the height of his powers as a mature artist, Franco Paisio offers the viewer a subtle yet exhilarating visual experience. Black may signify solitude, even melancholy, but colour will always swamp us with the occasional sunlight that is happiness."
James Cowan
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