Intuitive Spaces

In John Brosio’s new works, his subjects—elderly people in a moonscape, skeletons and wolves in a nature scene, a cook in a taco stand—are dwarfed by the immense scenery around them. They are small and insignificant, and yet they are holding their ground as citizens of these vast lands.

- John B Rosio

“There is nothing anyone can achieve without having to remember how small we are. Whatever is going on ‘out there’ is huge. And not just physically but psychologically and time-wise—all of it,” Brosio says from his California studio. “There was a Dutch painter named Jacob van Ruisdael whose images grabbed me in college for their use of scale and perspective, but I do not see any difference between that and the opening of the original Star Wars film where a mile-long spaceship comes in from overhead. Incidentally, one of my teachers was an artist named Richard Bunkall whose work very much reinforced these dynamics.”

Brosio, whose Los Angeles studio is close enough to Dodger Stadium to hear the crowds during games, will be presenting this new work beginning September 15 at Arcadia Contemporary at its new location in Pasadena, California.