NEIGHBORS, an exhibition of new works by Paolo Marino
October 28- November 25, 2017
Gallery hours: Saturdays 12-5PM and by appointment.
Paolo Marino was born in the city of Rochester, NY, and was raised in one of the surrounding suburbs. He has worked as a movie theatre employee and manager, an assistant at a Montessori school, a teacher, a pizzeria janitor, and a drummer in several bands and a bar. He Graduated with a BA in Studio Art from Nazareth College in Rochester, and an MFA in Print Media from Cranbrook. Most recently, he has shown work at the International Print Center in New York, Big Car Collective in Indianapolis, and curated a show of mainly Detroit based artists for his residency at the Pennsylvania State University in State College, PA.
“I think a lot about fantasy. I used to play a lot of video games, and the older I get, the more I realize that the screen I spent so much time looking through was the most accurate representation we have now of how fantasy exists in reality. It is thin but not see through, and goes on into perceived infinity.
I find that in all I do, there is some sort of a threshold between fantasy and reality. I work from observation and from my head. I take experiences that I have had and turn them into vignettes, much the way a film director might – or a fiction writer. I think action movies are modern day history paintings. All of my work references the ways we ingest fantasy in some way – I make posters, film stills, dolls, models, and videos. And I do so in a way that improvises with my surroundings in order to better reflect them.”