PUBLICATIONS

• Architecture and Art are often united in an uneasy alliance, brought together by
  the creation of space and the desire to communicate within those spaces.
  Architects bristle at the messy business of Art; its emotional and visual distractions to their designs. While Artists complain that spaces are created without proper consideration for the works of Art that will occupy those spaces.

  The work of Glen Lasio confronts the alliance of Art and Architecture in ways that implore the viewer to reconsider their relationship. "I look at Architecture as an accumulation of archetypical forms. Shapes, lights volumes, motion and time entangled with each other create complex unresolved and fascinating situations....Art allows me the possibility to speak about these situations more vaguely, more allusively and therefore more truthfully."

  Lasio has explored the streets of Milan, Chicago, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, searching for construction sites; works in progress in the urban landscape. He often crosses into restricted areas to make photographs of unfinished balconies walls, windows, the raw beginnings of the architects vision. Some of these photos will be transferred and printed on his canvas, manipulated and mixed with paint, re-arranged to suggest new perspectives. Other times, he will use historical landmarks and then re-define them with his process.

  In Chicago, 2011, at the Thomas Masters Gallery, Glen Lasio appeared in his first major group exhibition. At that time he was completing his studies at the School of the Art Institute. The show featured several previously unseen, promising young Artists. Lasio unveiled large canvas works created from images he gathered in both Milan and Chicago. Although he included some muted colors, the mixed-media on canvas images could be described as primarily black and white.

  The most compelling example from the 2011 series is a mixed media work entitled, #6
  In this work we see a unique selection of objects; a street light, a European no entrance sign,
  a stop and go light and what appears to be an Architect's drawing. There are small additions of color added deftly to various areas of the canvas and a larger blue-green shape near the center that is a portion of the exterior of a building still under construction. This work is currently being shown throughout Europe with the French Organization, JCE (Young European Creatives).

  It is the simple arrangement and juxtaposition of these urban objects that provoke both our curiosity and propels our interest in solving the artists intent. But rather than dictate or clearly indicate what we should take from this urban landscape, Lasio allows the viewer to contemplate and make independent conclusions. Lasio's observations, ideas, and conclusions in each work seem to a matter of satisfaction that the work is completed; that some illusive harmony of composition has been reached. The viewer must create his own narrative.

  Says Lasio, " I get excited by the process of research....my method does not predetermine the possible discoveries I can make and does imply an end or a finishing point....."

  Glen Lasio lives and work in Milan, Italy thomas masters 2013