[detail]

It was a great studio visit. Along with the pleasure of some fine work, we had the pleasure of conversation with an animated artist (actually two or three) and some other good people (some familiar, some not), even if the ambient lighting turned out to be a problem for decent pictures. These are the views I left Bushwick with. They show two of the very large canvases Barry and I saw in situ within Andrew Piedilato's shared studio during a visit to this former ground-floor factory space two weekends back. I believe these two were both completed works, but in my enthusiasm with their impact I neglected to ask. We met the artist for the first time that afternoon. His own site has much better images of more work from this series as well as earlier ones. They shouldn't be missed; If you take a look you'll understand why I'm so excited about these canvases.

I liked Piedilato's painting the moment I first saw one seventeen months ago. It's a little strange, but until going back to my earlier post this afternoon I no longer remembered the work I'd seen then as being particularly large, even though I had actually mentioned its generous size in my text. So I was pretty surprised to see the latest pieces. They were all pretty "awesome", but certainly not just because of their size. Piedilato continues to combine exuberance and discipline in his new work, now being registered on an even larger scale: Everything we saw the afternoon we were there was roughly twelve feet square.

I love the strength and repetition of the various kinds of blocks, and boards, and wallpaper "prints", and then Piedilato always introduces some mad explosion or delightfully messy thing to take it much further than you could imagine it could go. Not every exhibition space can handle the size of these canvases, but with work of this quality, I can't believe this guy doesn't have serious gallery representation right now.