John Veteri

John Veteri				Small Works Gallery			January 5 - January 30, 2008

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	The Vison of John Veteri What can one say about an artist that can depict in strong black outlines Florence’s Signoria Square, the Church of Santa Croce, the Arno, Ponte Vecchio, and the Cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore and city houses seemingly all dancing and swaying together in song as it were the first bright day of creation? We can admit, surely, that this well-traveled, sophisticated man is in the full throes of a deeply imaginative reverie when he creates these visions. For such is the art of John Veteri. He is self-taught. His artmaking, while fueled by a populist sensibility, has a rigorous formal rigor to it that is matched by its intensity and freshness. Veteri has an undeniable comic strip feel for city life. That life, which he captures in such a persuasive fashion, is colorful, bold, chaotic, vibrant and comical. This carnivalesque aspect of social space is explored with remarkable energy, which combines in a unique way sensations of delicacy and rawness, rowdiness and refinement. There is a sense of parody and homage here to each of the New World and Old World environments that Veteri pays attention. And this adds to the obvious joy that courses through his work as his sense of theater and of the spectacle allowing us to humanize densely crowded city life. His formal intelligence, particularly when he exploits cut-outs and collage in ‘Street Fair” and “Skyline” where his intricate filigreed decoupage and collage elements, choice of contrasting colors and negative spaces allow the eye to oscillate between two and three dimensions is dramatically realized. In “Street Fair” and “Skyline” the artist’s images of packed (yet depopulated) city life is rendered as a social ecosystem with its food chain: large, larger and largest collective habitations as well as feminine and masculine energies congregate and integrate. Skyscrapers and townhouses twist and cavort to the beat of music, perhaps. Or they are drawn towards each other, swaying, like shy teenagers experiencing the throes of crushes. There is an illusion here of folksiness, a touch of the outsider artist which inflects the work as a whole yet there is a wonderful sense of knowingness and deep humanity that pervade John Veteri’s vision as well. And it is this deep connection with the things and impressions that matter to him that connect us to his work. Charles Baudelaire’s undeniable contention that “…genius is nothing more or less than childhood recovered at will, childhood now equipped for self-expression with manhood’s capacities…” is apt as we consider this artist’s early memories consist of those recollections of his father in the building trade drawing house plans and sketches and of his mother’s artistic inclinations. The animated spirit in Veteri’s work is seen and felt through the spontaneous yet controlled hand and touch of the artist. John Veteri’s imaginative impulses bring us into a charmed state recalling the child within us all. Through this vision all things are possible as the world is seen, awakened, as if for the first time. Dominique Nahas Dominique Nahas is an independent curator and critic based in Manhattan.