
CULT | Aimee Friberg Exhibitions is pleased to present Haptic Render, a solo exhibition of new drawings and installation by Francesco Igory Deiana, on view from September 11 through October 31. The gallery will host an opening reception on Friday, September 11 from 7-9pm.
Francesco Igory Deiana’s work explores the translation of form between digital and analog worlds. His highly detailed, labor-intensive drawings and altered found-object sculptures often appear to be three-dimensional renderings from his geometric 2D work. Over the years, Deiana has used ball point pen, spray paint, and photographic prints of screen distortion/feedback to create diptychs that manifest both a hyper contemporary space and reference classical forms.
Deiana’s recent work in graphite translates digital gesture into analog form. Beginning with an exploration of Photoshop brushstrokes, Deiana makes marks in the digital world, zooming in to find rough spots and imperfections. Once he identifies the miscalculated strokes, he explores the negative space of the subject, bringing the trace into the analog realm with graphite and paper.
Current use of the word “haptic”, relating to sensations and sense of touch in relationship to electronics and computers, comes from the Greek verb “haptesthai” - to contact or touch. Simply defined, haptic rendering is the computerized process by which sensory stimuli are offered to the user to convey information about the object, which is contained in physical attributes such as shape and texture. For this work, Deiana identifies aspects of digital touch, the imperfections, and then corrects them in analog form through his own dedicated mark-making. Deiana’s practice simultaneously illustrates the benefit and detriment to creative life embodied by technology.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Francesco Igory Deiana was born in Milan, Italy and lives and works in San Francisco. Working with a wide assortment of media - ball point pen, spray paint, and photographic prints to name a few - Francesco’s practice is just as likely to manifest as a drawing, a painting, or a sculpture and often confuses the distinction between these forms. Pulling from a variety of found images, Francesco creates an archive in which there is no hierarchy between contemporary events and historical facts. Deiana actively uses landscape, portraiture, and iconography in an effort to conjure the detached and unsettling feeling of our fractured contemporary world. Deiana has exhibited locally, nationally and internationally at venues including d406 (Modena, Italy), Ruttkowski Gallery (Koln, Germany), and Alice Gallery (Brussels, Belgium)..