Cruise the Collection
Marco Fusinato
Commentary by John McCormack, Starkwhite, Auckland, New Zealand.
Recently the Chartwell Trust acquired a body of artworks by Australian artist Marco Fusinato. The decision to purchase a cluster of works enables the Collection to represent Fusinato’s ongoing project and practices, which are revealed in the new acquisitions.
In his general practice Fusinato aims to construct a framework within which an improvisation can take place using a combination of two systems for making decisions.
The first allows the circumstances of a situation determine the directions taken during the making of a work, and the second allows the artist to determine the elements of a work according to what would be considered standard issue or culturally ordinary.
These systems are applied throughout the making of all works, from the conception of ideas, to the choice of materials, to the design of the work. They allow a space for improvisation to happen and the work to be realised.
And where decisions must be made by the artist, the systems are used to minimise the decision making process, resulting not only in the presentation of ideas in a pure form but ideas that are themselves a pure form.
The process can be seen in the four red paintings made by the artist during a residency at the Elam School of Fine Arts, which form a central part of the acquisition. The materials and process of making the paintings are the subject of the paintings.
Fusinato believes that the most direct way to make a painting is by covering a surface with one colour of paint. This eliminates decisions within the painting regarding composition, the relationships between colours or other formal considerations.
The intention is to get from point A to point B in the most direct manner using the most elementary means.
This eliminates unnecessary narrative, imagination or decoration. The work is positioned and presented as realism. It is the practice of regarding things in their true nature and dealing with them as they are... no illusion, no fantasy. There is no creative wizardry directed at the invention of something new. It is the here and now, using culturally established and accepted forms.
When people say to Fusinato “but I could do that” he says, “yes, that’s the point” which allows viewers to be drawn into the pure realm of ideas and experiences his art offers.
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To view recent acquisitions by Marco Fusinato use the thumbnail gallery
