FIELDS: New work by Michael Costanza

Illinois artist Michael Costanza returns to Wantoot Gallery on Saturday, December 3, 5:00pm - 8:00pm, for the opening of FIELDS: An Exploration Into The Immediate and Automatic Act of Mark-making. Wantoot patrons know Michael for his complex college compositions that weave multiple story lines. Michael was on hand for Wantoot’s gallery grand opening in 2012, and returned a few years later to create and host a 5 piece presentation for SLOW ART DAY.

"Dirt Cloud"-- An example of Michael's earlier collage.

 Michael’s show FIELDS is his first exploration into the immediate and automatic act of mark-making, treating each picture plane as a field on which to make the mark. Just as games are played on fields, this body of work consists of a variety of art games where a rule or set of rules were created and followed to execute the work. Occasionally, rules may have been broken to make the piece work.

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As the body of work continued to grow, themes and representation began to transpire from the automatic marks. Certain marks began taking on representational meaning: the sights and sounds of water, waves, streams, land, grass, dirt, mountains and natures’s textures became the most prevalently used. With these thematic attachments transpiring, the images then developed a distant relationship with ancient, writing systems such as hieroglyphs and aa variety of other pictographic scripts.

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FIELDS  features over 17 artworks ranging in size from 5" x 5" to 24" x 36".