Anthony Siciliano

My primary working methods are collage pieces on paper, printmaking, and canvas. The process begins with photography, usually combining my own photographs together with found images or text. Bringing these pieces into the computer, I can layer them over one another and combine the fragments together to create new juxtapositions. By arranging (and then rearranging) objects and layering them within the collage, I hope to create a visual language that speaks of no particular time period, but rather re-contextualizes the imagery within my experience and to a shared past. A kind of wish fulfillment that speaks to our underlying belief in love, a guiding force to our destiny, and our daydreams of wants and desires.

Regardless of where I begin, the work tends to deal with issues of time. The weathered and aged surfaces are based upon the source materials I utilize. Their fading, from both memory and from actual physical existence, evokes this desire to preserve and hold on to things that are important. It goes beyond simple nostalgia, for I don’t look to the past and yearn for days gone by. Rather, it becomes an enshrinement of memory and a reestablishment of the relationship between the object, the viewer, and myself.

Other themes, such as divinations, figures from mythology, and constellations lend themselves to my attempt to look to the past and the future for clues to the present. This iconography is meant to evoke a collective memory of culture, rather than specific personal events. Yet, it is an extremely personal work because it depicts objects and symbols that were meant to be private: letters, postcards, drawings, handwritten notes, snapshots, doodles and personal mementos are put on display with a naïve sense of wonder and history. With this work, I hope to shed light on the power of memory and show that it can have the ability to both complicate and clarify through a combination of myth, mystery, and beauty.

Anthony Siciliano 2009