Counting Sheep and Cutting Roots: Art Reception

Counting Sheep and Cutting Roots: New Work by Anthony Iacono and Simon Ko

Employing a process of using stencils and mining the legacy of the relationship between positive and negative form, Anthony Iacono and Simon Ko will be presenting a series of paintings and photographs that share the concept of the negative shape as a space filled with meaning, and yet ambiguous in implication.

Anthony Iacono will be exhibiting a series of photograms made during a period of insomnia in which he built a darkroom inside his bathroom. The work combines both created elements and detritus to form compositions that imply movement and an absence of light. The photograms are made from large constructed negatives; paint and other elements are placed on top of light sensitive paper and then exposed to light. The result is a combination of shadows and shapes of varying monochromatic tones, each implying a humble evidence of the hand. As daybreak approaches, the work process must come to a stop, as the darkroom loses its functionality.

Simon Ko will be exhibiting a series of paintings that use the common house plant as an allegory for the notion of displacement and the perpetually migrant, rootless person. By collecting and using images of different houseplants from photographs taken around the city, paintings are created through a process of tracing, transferring and staining. The transformation of a house plant into a shape stripped of detail and varying in perceptibility echoes the calm yet apprehensive condition of contemplating what it means to lay down one's roots.

About the artists:

ANTHONY IACONO
Anthony Iacono was born in Nyack, New York and lives and works in Brooklyn. He studied at Massachusetts College of Art and Design and the School of Visual Arts in New York where he received his BFA. His fist solo show, Victor Victoria was last summer at Sloan Fine Art's project space in the Lower East Side. While he has exhibited his painting, sculpture, and photography in group shows at Sloan Fine Art, Visual Arts Gallery, CultureFix Gallery and Hart Gallery, this is his first time showing his photograms. The artist's work has been featured on the Village Voice Online, Hi-Fructose and The Queerty.

http://anthonyiacono.com/

SIMON KO
Simon Ko is an artist working in Brooklyn. He received his BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art. He was a resident at the Vermont Studio Center in January 2012. In addition to a studio practice, he has organized curatorial projects to help present the work of local artists. "Counting Sheep and Cutting Roots" will be his first collaboration with Littlefield.

http://www.kosimon.com/