Stardom

It is evident in Steven Colucci’s paintings that he has established a uniquely distinctive pictorial vocabulary; a strong allusion to -- or moreso an extension of -- his performance works. Colucci’s paintings depict a sort of kinetic spectrum, or as he refers to them “a technical expression of physicality and movement”. Whereas the French performance and visual artist Yves Klein used the human body as a “paint brush” to demarcate his paintings and thereby signify a residue of performance, Colucci’s utilization of nonsensical numbers and number sequences taken from dance scores, as well as heat-induced image abstraction depicting traces of movement likewise inform his vocabulary. In the strand of the choreographed, yet incorporating moments of chance, Colucci’s paintings represent an overarching structure; a rhythm of being and state, yet detail erratic moments -- moments that denote a certain frailty -- the edge of human stamina. Colucci’s paintings dually represent a form of gestural abstraction -- and also the reverse of this -- a unique anthropomorphization of varying states of movement -- that sometimes present as a temperature induced color field, at others are juxtapositions of movement and depictions of physical gestural images themselves. Colucci’s use of vernacular and found materials such as cardboard evoke his mastery of set design, and also reference a sort of collective experience of urbanity and the ephemeral. Such contradictions seem to permeate not only Steven Colucci’s artwork, but also are reflected in his person -- one who grew up in New York’s Bronx during a zeitgeist moment in visual and performing arts in the 1960s -- one who shifts with ease from happenings and experiments in New York City, to his meticulously choreographed megaproductions at Lincoln Center or starring in the Paris ballet, to his elaborately constructed paintings. Colucci is an artist that transcends both performance and the picture plane.