Visceral City
Michael Sacramento • ShawNshawN
Artists Reception: June 23, 6pm - 8pm
On display: June 23 - August 3, 2018
Artists Reception: June 23, 6pm - 8pm
On display: June 23 - August 3, 2018
Visceral City is an art exhibition featuring the emotionally driven artwork of ShawNshawN and Michael Sacramento as inspired by their urban environment.
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ShawNshawN observes and paints with a perspective, which dwells on personal pain and deep insight to his society. Michael acts as a recorder and interpreter of his immediate day-to-day surroundings. Being that they both live in the same environment, which is the San Francisco Bay Area, they share similar visual inspirations.
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However, the aesthetics of their artwork is nuanced by their response to their ocular cues. ShawNshawN tends to focus on creating abstract surfaces that are inspired by his urban lifestyle. Michael focuses on the collage of surfaces and images. Together, ShawNshawN and Michael's exhibition aims to provide viewers new lenses in which to see their world and inspire them to be more keenly aware of their emotions as they experience their urban lives.
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About the Artists
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Michael Sacramento’s collaged paintings are created with fragments of images, objects, textures and colors that are inspired by his day-to-day observations—from street scenes, billboards and posters to often overlooked surfaces, birds and architectural elements. The process of collecting and finding inspiration from these visual cues, then using them to create a new visual experience, is his choice of intuitive self expression. Consequently this body of work can be perceived as an analogy of the human experience and how independent entities can be interdependent to create a higher, more textured and layered existence.
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ShawNshawN works the paintings starting in brushwork as an initial layer and then scrapes with metal tools the surface of the canvas. The tools used are the basis of architecture and finishing cement, so you could say these are the basis of a city construction. Quiet often the whole surface is continually in action without an easy place to rest the eyes. This reflects the vivid emotional response of the artist to his environment in the city, kind of a love/hate relationship; he loves the access to great art, museums, but struggles with the crowded highways and congested spaces of the cityscape. This is his visceral reaction to the city. Visceral City.
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