DECEMBER 6th-16th OPENING deC 6, 5-8pm

Giordano  Biondi’s 'Meridians'  are imaginary cities that inhabit an eternal  midday hour. Noon is the time when the sun flattens the world through the absence of shadows cast by objects,  and the demon of the midday hour sows restlessness among things that  have briefly lost their weight and consistency. The viewer looks at  these cities from above, the gaze equivalent to the direction of a sun that shrinks away the shadow of buildings and renders  them utopian and ideal, abstract entities without memory. The plazas,  streets and courtyards collect the wandering eye and project it along  these urban atlases, restless in the midday these cities have appeared.

Giordano’s   drawings seek to depict an ideal cityscape as a narrative that invites  the gaze to linger in everyone of its components. The eye finds itself ringed by the buildings of an open  square. It flies and travels through the straight lines of the  boulevards, exiting away from the art or entering into it. And each  house and palace is the locus of an encounter or an idea, expressed through the peculiarity of its architecture. The whole picture  is then an alphabet or an archive into which the gaze consults,  travels, or finds refuge and solace. this fictional city is intended as a  sort of dream catcher for the eye, a portal (or perhaps end point) of an invisible land.

“Émigré II - The Folds”  is an ongoing series which the artist began in 2013. This second  iteration of the series continues to elucidate the ever present, but now  markedly heightened shared moment of political and ecological uncertainty through the eyes of the emigrant. The work  evokes, the joy and the sorrow of the migration experience, both of  dislocation and integration. We are also drawn into stories, as in  literature where we become identified with the main character and are asked to feel and live those contradictory states of  what is it like to be on the outside, looking in? And visa versa. Ad  infinitum! Aswell as the elevated states that finding a new home and  country can bring.

“The main character in  the current Émigré show is Gertrude/Trudy/Tina who was born in Donawitz,  Austria. Hers is like all emigrant stories...unique. She was born to a  family of steelworkers. A child of the second world war. Raised by her grandparents, with her one real connection  being with her grandmother, who was the only other female in the home.

In those days, a child  was seen and not heard. After school & her chores, her nights would  be largely spent alone under the kitchen table, lit by a single hanging  globe, listening to the uncles argue and debate the politics of the day, with the steelworks streams of molten metal  regularly giving their facial expressions an orange flash and glow.”

Research is critical to  Paradine’s methodology and he devotes much time to it. Once image  groupings cohere - they are digitally edited together. This part of the  procedure is time intensive involving much experimentation. Typically involving post-processing, layering, editing, retouching and  aesthetic tweaking, all in service to achieving subtle and complex  lighting effects.