Review by Grady Harp Down the Rabbit Hole and Back
State of the Union, 2011, 41X66 inches
Film or cinema was the first direction in art that young California artist John Brosio responded to and that could very well explain his preoccupation with movement and fantasy and the bizarre contradictions in nature he so adroitly paints on his canvases. His images he creates, both from nature and from his vivid imagination, are not unlike the special effects that replace the green screen in films: constructing near impossible situations that seem to threaten or challenge the foreground image is what makes Brosio’s magic work.
Looking inside John Brosio’s creative mind is not unlike falling down the rabbit hole: the reference here, of course, is from Lewis Carroll’s strange epic Alice in Wonderland where going down the rabbit hole led Alice into a strange, dreamlike world where things didn't make sense, or, that satisfying curiosity might produce bizarre or paradoxical experiences. And perhaps that constantly inquisitive mind has lead Brosio into apparent threatening situations – such as chasing tornadoes for three years in storm season in the Midwest and becoming mesmerized by the interaction of nature gone awry with human response to cataclysm. ‘For me the tornado represents a perfect blend of mythology and science. It is easy to imagine it alive and unpredictable, to view it as a god or agent thereof. One sees this mile-high banshee choosing certain targets and skipping others like a jittery reaper with sound and mannerisms so evocative of a living entity.’ Brosio grew to understand the behavior of such natural variations in weather moments: ‘Witnessing its birth, entire life, death and interim behavior leaves me feeling privy to the life of an animal greater than us—the footfall of a giant. And, after all the wonder and speculation, it is in the end, like me, just a mass of animated dust.’
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