Christopher Cascio was born in New Orleans and raised in Houston. After graduating from the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in 1995, he received a bachelor’s degree in painting/drawing from the San Francisco Art Institute. Over the next four years Cascio worked in Los Angeles as part of the collaborative duo Uncomfortable Jams, who were represented by New Image Art Gallery and performed regularly in and around Los Angeles. In 2003 Cascio returned to Houston, found work as Marketing Manager at Da Camera of Houston. Thinking outside the collaborative mindset, he began developing a new body of densely covered and ornately detailed pen and ink drawings. In 2007 Cascio and six fellow HSPVA graduates formed the ArtStorm gallery, founded to create an accessible, approachable and affordable gallery space for emerging and unrepresented artists. Around this same time his drawings gradually gave way to text work and his current body of work, the large-scale collages on view during the exhibit Harmonic Spheres at Lawndale Art Center.
Artist's statement:
I create ornate collages made from Xerox prints of tangled cords and audio equipment, the negative space cut away, arranged over a fluorescent orange ground with a thick layer of varnish on top. I scour the internet with much the same fervor as an actual vintage audio collector, who often finds something vintage that others find obsolete. After collecting a vast array of images I arrange them for the viewer’s consumption by implementing familiar geometric patterns and designs. I cut the tangled cords out from Xerox photos of actual tangled cords, no tricks. For the pieces that are mirror images, or in stereo, I use a computer to reverse them in order to accomplish the Rorschach-like patterns. Each piece is cut out twice, once in reverse, and lined up and adhered by hand and eyeball. Besides the mirrored images there are no duplicate photos. The imagery I use comes from appropriated photographic images so any further explanation of those would just be useless.
I consider myself a post-modernist who regards aesthetics over conceptual concerns. I do not wish to cloud the viewer’s mind with any preconceived notions or conclusions resulting from putting the work into the context of critical statements. I believe the best art always works on multiple levels (visual, conceptual, spiritual, scientific et al.) without explanation, and often reveals more and more of itself to the viewer upon each future viewing.
Shown at Lawndale Art Center, ArtStorm, Brasil. Participated in group exhibitions at Domy, DiverseWorks, and galleries in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
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