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Anthony Siciliano
"Our lives are not the stuff of a quaint ethnological story –
A misty harkening back to a romanticized past " - William Poy Lee
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 2007
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