School of Visual Arts and MFA Illustration as Visual Essay present “War x Artifice,” a solo exhibition of work by department alumnus and BFA Illustration faculty member, Riccardo Vecchio. It is on view Saturday, February 4, through Thursday, March 2, at the SVA Gramercy Gallery, 209 East 23rd Street, New York City.

For this exhibition, Vecchio called upon the 100 year anniversary of World War I to explore the relationship between war and the artifice of nation-state building and the creation of borders on the landscape of the Italian Dolomites. He explored the typography and transformation of this former battlefront along the former borders between the reign of Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, creating plein-air paintings and drawings of the starkly elegant yet unnatural forms in ice and rock that were the result of scarred mountain peaks and bomb craters blown up 100 years ago.

In his New York studio, Vecchio began the second part of his exploration: trying to decode the relationship between technologically advanced tools of visualization and firsthand experience. Utilizing high-altitude visual aids like satellite imagery, Vecchio created a new set of multidisciplinary works interacting with the work done on location. These works became an emotionally-charged, dynamic exploration of an imagined adventure, and no less valid than the works created on location.

His sculptures created in part utilizing 3D printers continue to address his ongoing question about how, as craftsmen and women, we can reconcile the seeming dichotomy between active versus passive interaction. Is technology in direct opposition to craftsmanship, or does the confluence of these two techniques produce something unique, and more impassioned to the collective imagery than the reliance on a single technique alone?

Exhibition

War x Artifice

SVA Gramercy Gallery

Reception