Tony Ingrisano

Statement

I am drawn to the many societal and infrastructure systems that surround us. My work explores the arrangements that we live within.  I paint floor plans for cathedrals and churches, subway and sidewalk layouts, aerial views of farmland, nautical maps and tides.  Ladders that lead to nowhere, negating their sole function.  Each time I abstract my subject matter in some way, by adding to it, layering it, and letting its design dictate the form, ignoring original functionality. Lines crisscross, fall apart, and lead to nowhere.  I am drawn to the idea of the discarded, no longer functioning framework, and finding beauty and rhythm within these structures that were conceived of for a purely utilitarian purpose.   

 Much of my work is done on paper that has been cut up into thin, uniform strips, rearranged and realigned to create a new system on which the images sat. In doing this, I am not only studying and drawing absurd, reconstructed structures, but also systemizing the very materials I am using.   

Collaging of the structures we live within, the work begins to create a new, organic life of its own.  It recaptures some of what has been lost in the natural world through the human lineage of development and progress.