Dante Marioni, Heliotrope with Red Standing Leaf, 2010. courtesy: traver gallery, seattle
This joint exhibition of new works by John Kiley and Dante Marioni (opening August 5th and on display through August 29th), provides an ideal chance to reflect on the outsize influence of the Italian master Lino Tagliapietra. It was, of course, Tagliapietra who brought Venetian glassblowing to the United States in the late 1970s, revolutionizing glassmaking practice through the introduction of centuries-old techniques to a younger generation. Both Kiley and Marioni worked closely with Tagliapietra, and (like Tagliapietra, himself) have taken traditional Venetian techniques and expanded on them by bringing their own artistic sensibilities. The results deftly illustrate two different ways one can pay homage to tradition while expanding the range of possibilities of the tradition itself.
While Marioni and Kiley share an emphasis on technical mastery, the feel of their works is completely different. Marioni’s vessels exhibit a certain playful elegance, saturated with a bright, almost Pop Art color pallet. They are out of scale, almost cartoonishly imposing, like the vases and urns of an eccentric royal family with a brash style. Kiley, on the other hand, practices an austerity of color and tone that invites introspection. The large apertures cut into his sculptures suggest a refined sense of emptiness, rendering a certain instability due to the lack of a core (I am tempted to compare these works to a semi-transparent, heavily glossed peach with its core extracted, or a brand-new car with nothing at all under the hood, only a view of the ground below – a little unsettling, right?). These qualities suggest another influence on Kiley — the late Seattle artist George Tsutakawa, whose fountains too showcase a vibrant, flowing surface twined around empty space (and whose influence Kiley avowed in an interview with the Hot Sheet earlier this year).
John Kiley, Pass, 2010. courtesy: traver gallery, seattle
Yet the difference in sensibility between Kiley and Marioni gives way to a deeper level of shared inheritance from Tagliapietra: that of a minute attention to the effects of light, the sense in which the work both reacts to and exerts its influence on the surrounding space. These works, much like those of the master himself, interact boldly with their environment, producing an aura of silence, a muted presence mediated by the infiltration of light through the art-object, and sustained by the ponderous gaze of the viewer.
—Lee Gaizak Brooks
IF YOU GO:
John Kiley & Dante Marioni
August 6th – 29th, 2010
Traver Gallery – Seattle
110 Union Street #200
Seattle, Washington 98101
Tel: 206-587-6501
Website: www.travergallery.com