Photo courtesy Marisa Tesauro
Biography
Marisa Tesauro b. 1976
Marisa Tesauro is a body and mind moving through time and space, making us aware 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. She uses materials of the present with a sage nod to the past. Inspired by the ruins of cities, both old and new, her work evokes buildings that once held lives and artifacts of past civilizations, ancient ruins that stand haphazardly as a backdrop amidst our modern, ever-changing world that continuously erases the present. She 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, lectures relating to her research and work with the archeology field and her work is featured in La Romanizzazione Dell’Italia Ionica, Aspetti e Problemi, featuring Miti Oggi Ruderi Domani, written by Lepore, Lucia and published by the Università Degli Studi di Firenze and the Museo Di Storia Naturale. She is the recipient of a 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
Photo Courtesy Marisa Tesauro
Artist Statement
How would an archeologist of the future make sense of material evidencing today’s consumption? I make work about our impact on the environment. My practice pulls from my experience in theater and with archeologists. I reference stage setting, archeological digs and cataloging practices.
My drawings and sculptures depict discarded objects and derelict scenes. In a series entitled Secondary Objects, I use watercolor to depict materials such as protective plastic nets for glass bottles and cardboard packing used in shipping. Taking inspiration from the chiaroscuro tradition and Giovanni Paolo Panini’s ironic scenes of ruins in the early 18th century, I transform banal objects and fragments into re-imagined monuments that mirror the fragility of the urban landscape.
Inspired by my surroundings, the irony implicit within hulking architecture so easily destroyed and remade delights me, and I infuse it into my sculptures. I build structures with no anchor, capturing the moment where the sculpture appears to be on the brink of collapse.