Nicholas Anthony Mancini
Over the past six years my focus has shifted toward what I call the Image Object, images in our everyday world that are flat while existing in three-dimensional space. These objects become metaphors for the act of painting itself, wrestling between the flatness of the picture and the space it occupies, as well as questioning the position of the viewer.
The Image Book series plays with our perception of time, scale, and space. Each painting explores a single still frame from a video of hands flipping through the pages of a book. The book is a personal archive, an ever-expanding collage of personal photographs, magazine clippings, and a range of other ephemera. The resultant paintings challenge our perception of depth, containing a confluence of images with varying perspectives, resting on flat pages, frozen in a separate field of space. These paintings are close to human scale so that the viewer may feel like they are entering an architectural space.
The Mirror Object diptychs are based on an unusual object I purchased many years ago. The object houses two mirrors set at diagonals, so when one looks at the object directly what is reflected is the space below and above the viewer- the self-portrait is not reflected. The origin and intended use of this object is unknown, but for me it is an image machine- a readymade ever-changing diptych. Painting the two mirror reflections does the impossible of looking at two spaces at once. The diptychs ask questions about how we location our bodies in space. Who is the viewer, who is the subject, where is the painter?
