AUGUSTO SANDRONI: Electro Wonky Funkadelic

LOS ANGELES - July 11, 2014 - PRLog -- AUGUSTO SANDRONI
Electro Wonky Funkadelic

July 12 – August 16
Artist’s reception: Saturday, July 12: 6-8 PM

MALONEY FINE ART
2680 South La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90034
310.570.6420
www.maloneyfineart.com

Electro Wonky Funkadelic, an installation of new paintings, drawings and sculpture by Augusto Sandroni, will be on view at Maloney Fine Art from July 12 until 16 August 16, 2014. The artist, who was born in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil in the 1960s, came of age when the Utopianism of tropical Modernism was at its peak, and that, along with the largest carnival in the world, played a creative role in later forming his artistic vision. Seeing himself as a visionary artist who operates as if self-taught, Sandroni intuitively works with mundane, non-traditional processes and materials, such as industrial tape, aluminum foil, cardboard, burlap, found objects, and fabric paints. Not striving to make something too perfect, he makes non-symmetrical forms out of cut pieces of tape that act as a “place holder” for paint impasto, playing with the coincidence or absurdity that something can be made from these materials.

His work — straddling a unique space between Arte Povera, Pattern and Decoration, Minimalism, abstraction, craft and just being “things” — has been based on sustained meditation. To look at his daring use of color, texture and wild shapes, it may come as a surprise Augusto Sandroni’s influences are Zen Buddhism (negative/positive space), Arte Povera (simple everyday materials), the Mono-ha Japanese art movement (experiential, ephemeral) and the work of Robert Irwin (seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees). Like the Arte Povera artists before him, Sandroni attempts to break down the ‘dichotomy between art and life’ (Celant: Flash Art, 1967), mainly through the creation of paintings, drawings, installations and sculptures made from everyday materials. These apparently simple, abstract compositions are instantaneous, yet come out of a practice of extreme observation, using spatial construction and wonky, slightly off-kilter geometry as devices of stimuli and optimality to act as a mirror or contrast to, as Sandroni sees it, “the speed, clutter, information confusion and information overload of today’s urban living.”

Augusto Sandroni was born in 1964 in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. He came to New York in the early 80s, where he met artists Keith Haring, Futura 2000 and Jean Michel Basquiat, and participated in the spirit and culture of graffiti art and the lower east side. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts Cum Laude in Painting-Printmaking, at San Diego State University (2011), San Diego, CA and a Masters in Fine Arts at Claremont Graduate University (2014) Claremont, CA.

Electro Wonky Funkadelic is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles.

Sandroni lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

AUGUSTO SANDRONI
Born: 1965 Bahia, Brazil

EDUCATION

2014  MFA - Claremont Graduate University, Claremont CA

2011  Bachelor of Arts, Cum Laude - Painting-Printmaking, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA

SOLO EXHIBITS

2014 “Electro Wonky Funkadelic" - Maloney Fine Art, Los Angeles, CA

2004 "Kronologically" Voz Alta Gallery, San Diego, CA

GROUP EXHIBITS

2014  "Salivate"  Group show organized by Conchi Sanford, Fullerton CA

         ”Only Dreams Now”, Group Exhibition - Spring 2014, CGU, Claremont, CA

2013 "SNEEK PEAK",  Second Year MFA Exhibition - Fall 2013, CGU, Claremont, CA

2013 "GLAMFA", Greater Los Angeles MFA Juried Exhibit - Cal State University, Long Beach, CA

2012 "Indecent Proposition" Installation Group Exhibition - CGU, Claremont, CA

2012 “Wow and Flutter” First Year MFA Exhibition - Fall 2012, CGU, Claremont, CA

2011 “Student Awards” Juried Exhibit- Spring 2011, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA

2010 “Student Awards” Juried Exhibit- Spring 2010, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA

2010 “Regional” Group Show, San Diego Art Institute, San Diego, CA

2007 “End of the year Show”, Voz Alta Gallery, San Diego, CA

2006 “Home Show” (740 Group reunification), Voz Alta Gallery, San Diego, CA

2005 “Cruzando”  Voz Alta Gallery, San Diego, CA

2003 “Two Man Show” (and James Watts), Ocean Beach People’s Coop, Ocean Beach, CA

2002 “Two Self-taught Masters of Disaster” (with sculptor James Watts), Studio 1922, San Diego, CA

1998 "OMA Regional", a Juried Exhibition - Oceanside Museum of Art, CA

AWARDS

2011 Distinction in Art, San Diego State University
2010 Dean’s List, San Diego State University