JOE MANCUSO

left: Rainy Day, Dream Away, 2009, inkjet prints & acrylic on canvas, 72x60"
center: Ghost, 2009, acrylic & graphite on canvas, 30" diameter
right: Big Slinky, 2001, found wooden gaskets & glue, 24x60" dia.

Constructed from layers of paint over newsprint, Joe Mancuso's paintings elegantly balance meticulous craft and stoic materiality.
Mancuso's refreshingly honest understanding of humble materials such as latex paint, news print, concrete and bricks allows the artist to create elegant art objects from industrial debris. Materials are chosen for their physicality and nature and arranged in grandiose configurations.
The artist's mathematical preparations, rigorous patterning and complex construction techniques appear at odds with the use of found objects,
but the artist resolves this paradox in ways that are infinitely varied and enriching. Mancuso uses a restrained palette employing whites, grays,
and blacks, with accents of muted reds. The canvases appear built of constructed layers of paint over newsprint. With exacting restraint and considerable understatement Joe Mancuso proves again and again that less is indeed more.

Selected Exhibitions:

AR/ Contemporary, Milan, Italy
Sergio Tossi Arte Contemporanea, Florence, Italy
New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA
Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, TX
Galerie Rottoff, Karlsruhe, Germany
Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ
Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, TX