Statement
I make work about our impact on the environment by creating interconnected drawings, sculptures, and installations that move between abstraction and representation. I use dramatic scale shifts in my work to create a sense of flux — a state of simultaneously becoming and devolving, much like the cities we inhabit. Vociferous documentation of urban spaces combined with study of ecology, archeology, and fantastical 18th century architectural renderings inspire my practice.
Protective plastic netting for glass bottles, cardboard packing and debris transform into reimagined monuments that mirror the fragility of the urban landscape. Each sculpture pairs sensitively crafted objects with familiar found elements that appear dislocated from their source and mysterious. Intentionally composing these relationships, I express the physical environments we navigate while alluding to the metaphysical.
While each part may be intricately beautiful or conversely utterly mundane, an expansion occurs as I place pieces in relation to one another. Themes such as excavation, archaeology, architecture, and the residue of human activity emerge. Inspired and provoked by my surroundings, the irony implicit within hulking architecture, so easily destroyed and remade, enraptures me, and infuses into my work. I build structures with no anchors and arrange fragmented elements, highlighting the absence of an integral part, where the sculpture is on the brink of collapse.
Biography
Marisa Tesauro ((b. 1976) documents and reimagines the traces of what we leave behind in our contemporary world full of thrown-away objects. Her drawing, sculpture and installation are rife with concerns about the precariousness and negative impact of human systems.
Tesauro has exhibited extensively in group and solo shows internationally including La Specola museum, Florence, Italy, Queens Museum of Art, New York, Eyebeam Gallery, New York, La Escoscesa, Barcelona, Spain, Stand4 Gallery, New York, Martina Simeti, Milan, Italy, Project:ARTspace, New York, Dickinson Roundll, New York, Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York, John. D. Calandra Institute, New York, Radiator Gallery, New York, Bronx Museum of Art, New York, Newton Art Center, Boston, Massachusetts, Patio de la Hospedería de Monasterio de San Benito, Valladolid, Spain, Casaborne Gallery, Antequera, Spain and NARS Foundation, New York City. She has exhibited site-specific installations at Hunter’s Point South, New York, Monasterace Superiore, Italy, Old American Can Factory, New York, Bay Ridge Saw, New York and No Longer Empty at the Andrew Freedman Home. She has published two artist books, Strutture in 2012 with Content Series and Relics in the Construction of Place to document the site-specific work and research at Hunter’s Point South, 2016-17. She has participated and collaborated with archeologists working in the Magna Grecia area of Italy, given lectures relating to her research and work within the archeology field She is the recipient of an Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Emergency Grant, Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant, Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the Yvonne Force Award. She was formerly an artist in the Artist Pension Trust and was an artist in residence at the Queens Museum Studio in the Park, Bronx Museum of Arts: Artists in the Marketplace and received a full-fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center. Tesauro received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2001. She lives and works in Turin, Italy.