The New York Optimist
December 2008
"Sometimes Art
needs no Description
and no Additional Text"                         
Thank You Mystery Artist
!!!
                                
Curator: Alexander Viscio
Where are you Francisco?
Shooting galleries, Black Sabbath and the National Guard were reliable sources of amusement for me and a constant nagging consequence of the
addictions of the preceding generation. I certainly had my chances to fall in between the cracks of society’s mainframe of lost boys if it wasn’t for the
mentoring of my older sister who somehow was both a guardian angel and a member of the condemned souls’ needle community. And with the Army
marching through our main street called Neighborhood Road, sweeping up my sister and her friends by the hair the night “man” first walked on the
moon, I knew there was no place like home.
We lived in a one hundred year old two story cedar tiled dwelling behind two enormous chrysanthemum bushes in front of French widows. They were
on either side of what seemed like too many brick laid steps leading up to the front door that gave an adequate reason for two large plastic candles to
serve as gargoyles for the upcoming Christmas. And because of the tremendous moisture and humidity indicative for that area that far out on the
Island and just up the street from the Ocean, the walls eventually turned to paper where one could hear another tossing in their sleep in one of the
downstairs bedrooms and others sharing secrets and conspiracies in the cellar.
I would spend my adolescent years searching for and created portals with in the structure of the house. The shaft ways, sliding hatches and
removable pieces of wall and floor were all accessories to my need for more space to stockpile my provisions. A list would be made of these
sanctuaries to serve as a spy’s perch and secret storage units for all the non sensible items that would be discarded by the inevitable passage of time
leading to my exodus. But before that, there would be drawings, maps and even false descriptions to throw off the potential predator. After all these
were designs for the refuge and protection of ones imagination and if one wanted to be found they would merely emerge as if the intruder simply
looked right over them when in fact we were deep inside the viscera of our desire for almost a dream state self sufficient existence concealed just
underneath the floor where the bed lie.
The work of Francisco of Galerie Kunigk-Sato shepard’s me back to this time with trepidation and strained endearment. At first I received the work
with an irreverent intolerance for its delicate nature. Almost dismissing it’s weightlessness as too subjective and arbitrary and wanting to rid myself of
the task of acknowledging the force of allegory and its aura of concentrated introspection.
It is rare that my switch is flipped that fervently and it is apparent
that, especially if one considers the scale of the works to be no larger
than a book of fables and the pin-point efficiency in the drawings,
that I was overwhelmed by the impact of their uncanny ability to
convey such emotion and clarity of vision.
A formal drawback here is the inclination to discard them as
statuettes rather than sculpture. I wonder if they would be even more
effective if they stood ten feet tall instead of ten inches while
containing the same hyper illustrative detail through their dexterous
hand work which is customary for their size. In this scenario they
would elude the impression of being fetishistic. I suspect this is me
being greedy. Through their accommodating dimensions they instill a
peculiar sense of scale and intense narrative edge and content that
insinuate the paradoxical nuances of the Surrealists. This is what
makes me ache for an object with all these ephemeral qualities to be
massive and placed in the vastness of a city building’s square. These
illogical configurations suggest a more plausible accounting of the
sublime as if pulled from the inventory of icons accumulated from
ones attempt to understand and gain orientation to their social/political
position in the world somewhere between the floorboard and the
window of their apartment.
At times I think what we don’t need right now is another artist in the
world and that 95% of those that exist are surplus. Then I get this
work emailed to me which helps to expose my susceptibility to
impulses of denunciation and proves the platform of an open forum
fundamental.








Alexander Viscio
Curator: Alexander Viscio