Folding The Moon

In his new series titled Common Matter, Anthony Tremmaglia draws parallels to and connects with his ancestry, referencing both the passionate history of the Greco Roman-based sculptures and the artist’s current lived experience with those around him. The artist has chosen to celebrate and reflects on the love that he has shared with those closest to him and on what he has lost, ultimately choosing not to focus on absence but on celebration in these works by drawing parallels of the past to the present.

Through these paintings, Tremmaglia builds bridges to landmark achievements in art history such as Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne. He strongly believes that our lives parallel those of the distant past and seeks to connect them. Much like Greek sculpture or any form of sculpture, Tremmaglia’s work engages with the taming of nature through the reworking and polishing of rough stone- but keeping in the illusion of the flat surface.

The artist’s use of distorted flesh depicted with chalk, paint, and charcoal symbolizes the passions inherent in these age-old art stories. Tremmaglia maintains his signature figurative landscapes, this time enhanced and deepened with the use of found volcanic mineral and natural mineral from the regions in where he lives in Canada. He has also chosen to highlight the very essence of the mineral itself in some pieces, given the mineral center stage, in these large, abstracted paintings. In earlier works they were seen as resource, but here he brings some of these painting to life. New elements that result in bright, intense hues layered with methodical precision as he continues to investigate, on a single surface, where light, form, and elemental matter collide into one.