ARTIST TO WATCH: VISUAL POWERHOUSE
TOMASSO SILVESTRI: a Salvador Dali for the modern age
Passionately dedicated to exploring the inherent properties of spirituality and creativity, and its connective ability to transform and transport the viewers consciousness, Italian American artist Tomasso Silvestri is a force to be reconned with.
A creator of art that moves seamlessly between many approaches, styles, and visions, while always creating a cosmic energy that is connected by its luminosity of form, Silvestri’s striking abstract expressionist work creates its own universe. Silvestri’s art is profoundly influenced by his own experience and life; traveling the world, exposed to many different cultures, and creative influences. From music and visual arts to spiritual philosophy and teachings, his art draws us into an enigmatic, transformative, exotic, and sensual world of fantasy and spirit. Color and form undulate in fluid compositions that form an interior dialogue on the intersections of space, place, time, memory, culture, and history. His art redefines a very significant shift, revolutionizing a neo-surrealism with works that emphasize the theme of a journey that is at once universal, and yet intensely intimate and personal.
Silvestri is a painter and sculptor whose style, techniques and a subjectivity is both vast and diverse, yet always grounded in the internal, the psychology of people, places, history, and nature, and his physical response to the materials in articulating the unsaid. His primary focus and area of work is a unique approach to symbolic and informal abstraction- utilizing a signaturemystical symbolic language that echoes the interior movement of his art. Creating both intuitively and instinctively, he infuses his works with a spirit of harmony and balance, that is then juxtaposed with a distinctive and hypnotic edge.
Silvestri’s own personal journey, relationships and experiences clearly influences his art as he documents the wonder, strength and fragility of spaces and time. By recording these emotions, stories, and experiences visually in his work, he gives them significance, acknowledging the beauty, melancholy, and history. “From dreams, messages, sounds, and visions through my own scientific developments, what is important for me is to attack the viewer head on, there is nowhere to hide, embrace my power of psychic emotions evoked by provoking your deepest and darkest fears, doubts, and sparking your imagination” Silvestri explains.
Silvestri begins each piece by first collaging ideas and visions into something organic, forming layers to create entirely unique compositions that are very much open to interpretation. In artist’s series ASTRAL CODEX, (which will be on display at ART SANTA FE for its exhibition premier) we can clearly see Silvestri’s creative process of layering colors that create a duality of razor-sharp and soft textures, that coexist is a distinctive blend of symbolic and gestural expressionism. This work reveals his physical involvement in the art—paint has been applied with passion, leaving behind a verifiable artistic signature as testimony for the viewer. Ever the renaissance artist, Silvestri does not simply focus on one area, ever evolving his body of art goes beyond the spiritual and emblematic terrain, and into sociological and metaphorical themes
This is also evident in the groundbreaking works THE PROCESSION OF THE TRIUMPHANT TRIPHIPHANY and THE ANGELIC SONNET - THE INVENTION OF THE POETIC PSYCHOMACHIA, also on display at ART SANTA FE. With these works Silvestri transcends the role of an artist whose subjectivity focuses on the symbolic and spiritual; It forms the foundation of who he is as both an artist and individual.
THE ANGELIC SONNET is simultaneously poetic and commanding; emitting a transformative power, they elevate the viewer to a higher plane of awareness. What truly exists within his work is a vitality and rigor that is descriptive of a body of work reaching far beyond the confines of reality. Santa Fe marks the start of a global journey for Silvestri’s art, carefully curated to go beyond the context of the art fair to create conversation and connection.
Other confirmed works on display will include THE EMBRYONIC TEMPLE OF THE GODS and DE HOMINIS DIGNITATE, both of which emphasize a penchant for monolithic, eccentric, dynamic forms, and bursts of color. The works evoke a sense of abundance, a poetry that is only interrupted by brave compositions that suggest something far more ominous, swirling arabesques of color and tone.
Whether he is using brilliant and translucent jewel tones of turquoise, saffron, teal, and indigo, or rich crimson, violets and emerald, his use of color is instinctive; both literal and metaphorical, embodying an intense and energetic physicality so synonymous with the other greats of surrealism.
The magic of Silvestri’s art emerges in the tension between control and spontaneity- he creates a type of visual sound through composition and color—his art is made to listen to. It is this very ideology that is mirrored in Silvestri’s art, from prints and paintings, murals and sculptures, even to his latest ventures into sculptural design and fine art apparel.
His work is ultimately an evocative, intense, and sometimes surreal symphony of beauty and tension that provides the viewer with meditative explorations of both familiar and foreign realities.
As an artist Silvestri is incessantly searching for meaning and answers, but most significantly, a keen observer of humanity. He translates his experiences into a tangible vision that can be experienced both viscerally, spiritually, and intuitively by the viewer!