Like an unreachable world that you can almost touch! Somewhere between exhilarating strolls and endless daydreams, the paintings of Jacin Giordano open doors onto universes and atmospheres which, without ever waxing lyrical, invite the eye and the imagination to infinite digressions, but somehow always find the right balance in their integral ambiguousness - between reality and fiction, certainty and uncertainty. Rhythmic, almost musical, his work patiently threads every string of painting, observes them, and questions them one by one. Colour, matter, space, sculptural – even objectal - dimension of the painting, narration, optical play… like so many ingredients which, when added one to the other in ever-changing expressions, keep the eye alert and the mind awakened. With an approach – an accroach – that is direct, frontal and forthright, contradicting the idea of any possible pictorial illusion. All may not be revealed, but nothing is ever concealed. «The works in Shadows of echoes of memories of rainbows stem from my continual interest in the painting process. From Arrowheads to Cutpaintings to Monochromes and finally Shredded paintings, all of these works are the result of one studio process leading directly to another. My works are not predetermined by sketches, but meticulously pieced together like an evolving puzzle. Surprises and discoveries made within a current series often lead to the development of a new series.

To a large degree, the Arrowheads are the most artifact-like objects of my studio process. They are acrylic imprints of palette knives I use to mix batches of color. They are the embodiment of my initial process and its resultant residue. After mixing and thinning acrylic paint, I pour layers of it onto glass over several days. It then dries into a thick blanket of tangible acrylic, forming the basis of my Cutpaintings series. To finish the Cutpaintings, I use a utility knife to cut into the striated layers of acrylic and reveal colors that lay beneath the surface. By cutting into a painting, I can literally and metaphorically dissect and deconstruct the painting.

As a result of cutting, carving, tearing and shredding the Cutpaintings, my studio floor generally becomes littered with mounds of leftover material, the byproduct of which evolved into the Monochrome series. I adhered the scraps of floor paint to canvas and painted the surface a single color. The very idea of making a Monochrome painting with a capital “M” is weighted with a heavy history and so by reflecting colors of the rainbow in my Monochrome series, I hope to imbue the paintings with a sense of levity
and humor. The Shredded paintings, in turn, began as Monochromes that I shaved and sanded back down to a flattened finish. I also added white or gray to the process as a way to effectively erase and negate the celebratory beauty of the rainbow hued Monochromes. In my work, the rainbow has been a recurrent theme for several years—functioning simultaneously as a metaphor of childhood’s end (or more precisely, the grownup realization that the world isn’t altogether hospitable to our childish reveries) and the embodiment of my most useful painterly tool—color.

The title of my show is lifted from a Magnetic Fields song, When my boy walks down the street. In the song Stephin Merritt sings about his adoration for his boyfriend and the effect of this beautiful “boy” on the outside world—“Grand pianos crash together… whole new kinds of weather…everyone sings hallelujah…life just kind of dances through ya…he’s a whole new form of life…” As Merritt piles on his poetic praise you can’t help but realize he’s not talking about a boy at all, this is the effect that music itself has on the world. It’s a song about the process of songwriting. And as the song’s refrain suggests- “shadows of echoes of memories of songs”--the biggest fear for its creator is that his love for process itself is a love that may be fleeting.»

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