Art Center faculty artist, Bradley Biancardi debuts an exciting new direction in his paintings in Formless and Devotional. The exhibition includes the artist’s experimentations with scale, ranging from 14 inches to 10 feet in height, and subject matter that addresses the human form in a spiritual context. In Biancardi’s first solo show at the Hyde Park Art Center, the artist brazenly aims to push at the very boundaries of modernism.
Formless and Devotional presents a moment of transition in Biancardi’s career. Departing from the geometric, architectural forms of his past, he now turns to the body, the hand, tools, and religious iconography. With a direct nod to the style of Max Beckman and Pablo Picasso, Biancardi’s new work challenges traditional notions of modernism by re-examining the importance of the figure in contemporary art. According to Biancardi, “The paintings incorporate symmetry because this alludes to the human body, spiritual iconography and directness. The paintings are expressions of love, and the process exists in a place that is just as fragile.” Whether Biancardi explores this ‘fragile love’ through the religious importance of the tree as a form that traverses religions, or through the emotional import of an extended hand, he continues to be interested in the process of creating.
