DAY 2171 - Low Tide

Painting by Andrew Piedilato

Review by John Coulter

Andrew Piedilato is a Brooklyn painter from Athens, Georgia.  His stylized landscapes depict shattered worlds consumed by a deluge.

Piedilato uses a unique vocabulary across his series of works.  He’s built a language that describes forms torn apart that the the viewer must reconstruct.  Crumbled columns and gnarled ropes are shown strewn about organically like arteries: as if some cataclysm had shattered the realm.  His works thematize entropy and break down organization.  Constructions are laid ruin in a bold graphic style similar to Hokusai or Mondrian.  The worlds are dense with a compositional rhythm that makes them squirm like a Thomas Hart Benton landscape. 

‘Sea Snail’  showcases broken architectural elements wrapped like a snail resting in a nest of pipes tossed amongst a strange white sea of bricks.  The bricks are used in an unfamiliar way in these irregular seascapes. 

In ‘Hull’  a ship is awash a cola colored sea with stained icebergs.  A neon sky feels natural in these worlds.  The subtle use of perspective and shadows, give the strange worlds a grounded sense of reality.  Yet the alienness rivals the Fantastic Planet. 

Piedilato’s surreal shipwrecks contend with Giorgio de Chirico’s gutsy forms.  Make sure to collect his work and visit his website.