Dan Gluibizzi
The Russo Lee Gallery is pleased to present Together we follow by new gallery artist Dan Gluibizzi. Gluibizzi paints frolicking figures from our digital cosmos, utilizing photography from the amateur and selfie-sourced Internet. This exhibition, predominantly comprised of images from social media, highlights both the open possibilities and dark edges of online community life. Gluibizzi’s analog rendering of sexual, nude, or semi-nude digital images employ line and subtle washes to transform the mundane into the charmingly erotic. He creates works on paper that are often hand cut, and break the boundaries of traditionally framed spaces. For many of these images, it will be the first and only time, excepting their origins in the real world, that they will exist outside the digital realm, lending the quality of uniqueness to that which is actually replicated. Once the images are on paper, they begin their own real-world life, a second life.
While living and working in Portland, Oregon, Gluibizzi has an international reputation. He has illustrated for the New York Times and has earned critical commentary from Wired, Juxtapoz Magazine, White Wall Magazine, The Observer, Print Magazine, Beautiful Decay, Cool Hunting and New American Paintings. His work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Portland, San Francisco, Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Berlin, Copenhagen and New York.
Dan Gluibizzi takes digital images from social media and creates analog interpretations that highlight “both the open possibilities and dark edges of online community life.” He uses watercolors and acrylics to interpret the figures. In a new show at Russo Lee Gallery in Portland, titled Together we follow, the artist’s latest recreations of images from the Internet are shown.
Portland resident Dan Gluibizzi has a new body of work entitled Together We Follow, currently on view on his home turf, courtesy of Russo Lee Gallery. Over the last few years, Mr. Gluibizzi has spent countless hours adrift in a sea of imagery, gathering copious amounts of found portraits that document exhibitionism, exploratory sexuality, and fetishized subcultures. He is quite adept at contextual detachment, which he uses to set soft parameters for his subjects, coaxing different characters to mingle freely with each other in order to open the possibilities for alternative narratives.
Portland-based artist Dan Gluibizzi collects things. Whether it be perfectly color-coordinated ceramics or the hundreds of images used for his own work, he has perfected the art of constructing a collection. The artist scours the web for visual threads, and then slowly but surely, pieces them together to create beautiful portrait groupings, bringing greater meaning to his individual subjects.