INSIGHT: Week 5 | Luke Diiorio

INSIGHT IS A NEW ONLINE PLATFORM PRESENTED BY PIPPY HOULDSWORTH GALLERY, DEBUTING WORK BY A DIFFERENT ARTIST EACH WEEK. NEW WORK MADE DURING LOCKDOWN WILL BE HIGHLIGHTED ALONGSIDE A VIDEO STUDIO VISIT PRESENTED BY THE ARTIST. 

INSIGHT runs alongside the main gallery programme

Ming Smith: view here

INSIGHT: WEEK 5 | LUKE DIIORIO

Functioning sculpturally and optically, the curved paintings respond both to the history of art and to perception of the physical world around us. Luke Diiorio builds upon the language of pictorial abstraction from the last century and, drawing further inspiration, looks back to the composite altarpieces of the Italian and Northern European Renaissance - structures that operate with multiple levels of significance. The curved shape of the paintings looks almost intuitively to the curvature of the earth and established representations of the horizon line in landscape painting.

'While Diiorio is far from being a modernist, temporally distant as he is from the tradition, he is nonetheless advancing considerations of the concreteness and fugitive nature of color and light in ways that feel both eminently relevant and tied to art history.' 

Alex Bacon, The Brooklyn Rail, 2017

Diiorio's curved works abstract from the form of a traditional oil painting. The physical composition of each work - comprising individual curved wooden panels wrapped with canvas - bends, distorts, and repeats the idea of a regular, solid support. Stacked atop one another, the panels form a composition that activates movement: the work appears to multiply, mutate, and deconstruct even as it expands. Diiorio applies oils as though to a singular surface, painting each work with a colour gradient - a chromatic shift that is at times subtly perceptible and at other times dramatic. This gradient sets the work in motion, allowing Diiorio to present a contemporaneous, kinetic experience of colour.

‘In his work, Diiorio treats dichotomies and contradictions with a light hand. They are not problems to be solved but simply the state of things, to be accepted and even enjoyed.’

Jennifer S. Li, Art in America, 2015

'Diiorio is calling upon the reductive radicalism of minimal visual language. The works are the result of ‘where can I go from here’ once reduced to their fundamentals.'

William Davey, this is tomorrow, 2015