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Rosemarie Fiore, Smoke Eclipse #21, 2015, 28x 28 inches |
By Noémie Jennifer
"Painters usually have to work with the element of gravity, with paint dripping down. With me it's the opposite. My materials want to shoot up, and the challenge is to force them down onto the paper," explains Rosemarie Fiore on the phone from Los Angeles, where a show of her paintings opened last weekend at Von Lintel Gallery. The works, which feature circular pools of rich colors, make up a new series entitled Eclipse. Like planets orbiting silently, they cross each other’s paths and seem to vibrate on the paper.
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| Rosemarie Fiore, Smoke Eclipse #21, 2015, 28x 28 inches |
Fiore lives and works in the Bronx and has been using found machinery to create artwork since her residency at Skowhegan, completed after her years in graduate school. Her first experiments with fireworks began during a stint in Roswell, New Mexico, with an accident. “I was lighting off a smoke bomb and dropped it, and as it moved it left a blue dotted line,” she says.
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She describes her process as a meditative dance on top of the paper, carried out in silence—these are smoke bombs, not fireworks with gun powder. “Some machines move better than others. It’s like a dance partner: when you have a good partner, you don’t have to force anything. You can anticipate each other’s movements and move together smoothly.” The dance has strict time limits: once the smoke bombs run out of pigment, the show is over.
The Eclipse works are pared down compared to the larger paintings Fiore previously made with smoke bombs, which used collage to create hectic, layered compositions. “This show is much more about the simplicity of the smoke, about the colors interacting and creating subtle depths.” The use of a smooth printmaking paper also helped to yield those dreamy hues.
Larger pieces in this series are in the works. In coming months, Fiore will be collaborating with the metals department at UNC Greensboro to create a huge “eclipse maker tool” four feet in diameter.
Since then she has crafted increasingly sophisticated tools to capture
color and smoke. “At first I was just duct taping fireworks to a
broomstick and dragging it along the paper,” she says. Now her
laboratory includes various containers on wheels, with spouts specially
designed so the lit smoke bombs hit the paper with the right pressure.
The tools are perpetually in development: “While I’m creating the work,
I’ll see that I can add a new extension. I’m always editing the tools
and developing things.” For the Eclipse series, she modified a trash can lid and named it "Space Oddity."
She describes her process as a meditative dance on top of the paper,
carried out in silence—these are smoke bombs, not fireworks with gun
powder. “Some machines move better than others. It’s like a dance
partner: when you have a good partner, you don’t have to force anything.
You can anticipate each other’s movements and move together smoothly.”
The dance has strict time limits: once the smoke bombs run out of
pigment, the show is over.
 |
| Rosemarie Fiore, Smoke Eclipse #52, 2015, 28x 28 inches |
The Eclipse works are pared down compared to the larger paintings Fiore
previously made with smoke bombs, which used collage to create hectic,
layered compositions. “This show is much more about the simplicity of
the smoke, about the colors interacting and creating subtle depths.” The
use of a smooth printmaking paper also helped to yield those dreamy
hues.
Larger pieces in this series are in the works. In coming months, Fiore
will be collaborating with the metals department at UNC Greensboro to
create a huge “eclipse maker tool” four feet in diameter.
 |
| Rosemarie Fiore, Smoke Eclipse #42, 2015, 28x 28 inches |
Read full feature @ The Creators Project
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