Episode Details

This month we have with us visual artist, John Avelluto, born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Avelluto revels in mash-ups of images, products, and ideas where Italy and the United States converge. Avelluto’s multi-media work plays with Italian American culture and the existing linguistic and visual repertoire of references that have gone underappreciated and unexamined. It stands at a crossroads of what in Italian is referred to as contaminazione, moments and places where ideas and idioms collide across ever-shifting borders. As part of the artistic process, Avelluto employs a time-consuming method of layering numerous coats of acrylic paint to create strata of simulacrum imitating salami slices, dripping pizza, and other items that he augments and then applies to a flat surface. His new exhibition at the Calandra Institute, titled “Goombarooch Resignified” and curated by Calandra’s Joseph Sciorra, opened on May 7 and runs through September 13, 2019.

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