Genevive Zacconi’s figurative portraits employ a dark symbolism, presenting viewers with clues that allude to something more brewing below the surface. When she first began studying art, Zacconi found inspiration in surrealists Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte, and Frida Kahlo’s dramatic and symbolic works. Blood, cutting, and tears are just a few motifs that make up Zacconi’s visual language. Her latest series contrasts realistically rendered figures with endless lines of text, which they cry and hurl into literal word-vomit. All of the text that she uses is taken from her own correspondences over the years, which she transcribes by hand in her pieces. Intimate thoughts don’t translate well into text message form, but through Zacconi’s works, we can begin to understand the sender’s vulnerable feelings. “I’m expanding upon ideas I have been exploring in previous smaller-scale works of mine by combining elements such as handwriting, graphite drawings, and oil painting all within one composition,” she says. “Thematically, the art is inspired by the development and demise of interpersonal relationships, and in part, the role of digital communication in these paradigms as our social histories (ranging from the mundane, to the beautiful or even painful) are now preserved in detail via cellular messaging and emails.”
Genevive Zacconi is currently exhibiting the series in “Evocation”, on view at Sacred Gallery in New York through November 3rd.
