DON PORCARO:
TIME WILL TELL
EXHIBITION DATES:
April 1, 2023 - June 10, 2023
PRESS
2023, April 5 - Don Porcaro: Timeless sculptures for our time by Jonathan Stevenson, Two Coats of Paint
2023, June 5 - Don Porcaro by Shasti O'Leary Soudant, Sculpture
WESTWOOD GALLERY NYC presents “Don Porcaro: Time Will Tell,” a solo exhibition of sculpture and works on paper. This is Porcaro’s first solo exhibition with the gallery and includes twenty-seven artworks from the last decade, curated by James Cavello. The exhibition will be on view from April 1 – June 10, 2023.
Don Porcaro is a sculptor who has lived and worked in New York City for over 40 years. After his first sculpture course at Farleigh Dickenson University, he drew an immediate relationship between his artmaking process and structural concepts. Soon, he moved to New York City and pursued graduate studies at Columbia University, and thereafter joined the faculty of Parsons School of Design, where he taught for over forty years.
For the past decade, Porcaro has been creating totemic vertical forms created from carved modules of limestone, marble, metal, and other diverse stones. Instead of using a reductive process, he uses an additive process as he cuts, builds, and assembles layers together, joining them into larger forms. Porcaro has always looked toward architecture, archeology, and nature as key sources of inspiration. At sacred Indigenous sites like Chaco Canyon and Serpent Mound, he observed the human imprint on nature through architecture, as well as the effect of time and the elements on those structures. In a similar way, the layering of his sculptures alludes to the accumulation of geological time as well as cultural history he experienced. In most of his unique works, Porcaro includes one or multiple layers of dark stone to symbolize transformative events that would lead to historical shifts in a civilization. Other influences derive from the innovative engineering achievements of the great Italian Renaissance artists/architects, including Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Filippo Brunelleschi, and from modernist and contemporary artists like Isamu Noguchi, Martin Puryear, Michael Heizer, Nancy Holt, Sarah Sze, and Ronald Bladen.
On view are over twenty-two sculptures highlighting works from five series from the last decade: ‘Talismans,’ ‘That’s How the Light Gets In,’ ‘Everybody Knows,’ ‘Collective Engagement,’ and ‘Time Will Tell.’ In one of his largest over seven-foot-high sculptures, Everybody Knows 4 (2021), Porcaro contrasts layers of undulating marble, limestone, and slate as he tapers the body of the columnar form to figurative proportions. In Talisman 3 (2016) and Talisman 17 (2016), unique rings of brass appear almost as accessories, like the elongated golden neck rings in the Kayan peoples or the tall golden crown reminiscent of the royal regalia of Cambodia and Thailand. Other sculptures such as That’s How the Light Gets In #4 (2018) and Time Will Tell #2 (2023) recall forms like the lingam or Brunelleschi’s Dome and push the forms of his works to twist and rise with asymmetry in a suggestion of both infinity and evolutionary cycles. In addition to his sculptures, five works on paper on exhibit from his ongoing ‘Inventory’ series emphasize the fluid and playful forms of his artworks.
“My newest works emphasize both the columnar and figurative aspects to create an amalgam that is both architectural and human, with a nod to Plato's Symposium and Brancusi's The Kiss.”
- Don Porcaro
ARTWORKS ON EXHIBIT
To inquire regarding prices for artworks featured in the exhibition, and to purchase any of the artworks shown below, contact the gallery at info@westwoodgallery.com.
SCULPTURE, OVER 5FT
SCULPTURE, 2FT to 5FT
SCULPTURE, UNDER 1FT
PAINTINGS AND WORKS ON PAPER
ABOUT DON PORCARO
Don Porcaro is a New York-based artist who began his art career in the 1970s. Porcaro holds his BFA from Farleigh Dickenson University (Madison, NJ) and his MFA in sculpture from Columbia University (New York, NY). Shortly after his graduation, Porcaro joined the faculty of Parsons School of Design, where he taught for over 43 years (1975 to 2017), and where he is now Professor Emeritus of Fine Arts.
Don Porcaro’s artwork has been exhibited internationally and nationally in New York, California, Massachusetts, Mexico, Switzerland, France, Germany, South Korea, and Japan. His work is collected by museums and private collections, including the National Academy of Design (NYC), the D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts (Springfield, MA), the Progressive Corporation (Cleveland, OH), Emory University (Atlanta, GA), Forma Viva Sculpture Collection (Portorož, Slovenia), and others. His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Sculpture Magazine, Art in America, Artnews, and BOMB Magazine, among others. Porcaro is a recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, New York Foundation for the Arts/New York State Council on the Arts grant, and a Teaching Excellence Award from Parsons School of Design. He is also a member of the Abstract American Artists Association and the National Academy of Design. Don Porcaro is exclusively represented by Westwood Gallery NYC. He lives and works in New York City with his wife, painter Leslie Wayne.
Read more about Don Porcaro on his artist page.