Siro Cugusi

Born in Italy in 1980, Siro Cugusi works and lives in Sardinia. Siro obtained a BFA in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts, Sassari in 2004. He has exhibited widely throughout Italy and was recently included in Habemus Ego, a group show held at the Italian Pavilion in Sardia, and coincided with the 2011 Venice Biennale. Siro’s recent stateside showings include solo exhibitions at both Dean Borghi Fine Art (2016) and Mark Borghi Gallery in Bridgehampton, NY (2015).

WORK

Siro Cugusi is in constant search of inspiration. Often finding it while rummaging through old notebooks, ones jotted with past ideas and old sketches, these manifestations inevitably find their home in his current work and on a variety of surfaces ranging from canvas, paper, wood, to already existing materials—packing paper and pages torn from books, newspapers, magazines, even encyclopedias. Siro is a forager, “I respond very much to what is around me; I absorb things visually and collect them as thoughts… [these visions and materials] find their way into my work.” Siro’s work is the result of a layering process of materials and color, a constant experiment, with this amalgamation (sometimes his paintings will simultaneously include oil, acrylic and spray paints, enamel, markers, pencil, and pastels) creating unique and differentiated alchemic reactions and transformations on the surface of each support. Focusing more on form rather than color, Siro’s work exude an exploratory process.

RESIDENCY

Absorbing the visual elements that surround him, Siro’s residency piece will realize as a large oil abstract painting, one responding to his temporary surroundings here at Lux. Inspired by his new environment, Siro’s piece will evolve to reflect a convergence of dream and reality. Smaller works and studies will accompany this large-scale piece, and like the bits collected from old notebooks, past experiences, and dreams that inform his general artistic practice, Siro’s residency work is sure to explore his proclivity for deconstructing representation in favor of a visual language that escapes clear definition.