Updated: Mar 8, 2021
James Pustorino is an artist, curator, and arts organizer and is Director of Drawing Rooms, a Jersey City art-space. The Fine Arts Gallery at Saint Peter’s University is pleased to present his series Sound of a Star. Pustorino’s large-scale compositions engage concepts of language and pictorialization, through varying systems of mark-making and adopted ‘cultural’ forms, positive/negative space, concepts of unfinished/finished, as well as representational/abstract. His work focuses on invention of form and the optics of color. He works in thematic series, produced on various substrates and in various media that he compares to a band creating an album or cd using specific musical instruments or tones to create an abstract ''narrative'.
James states, “This is art not science, however, so all of these concepts are passed through the language of graphics, painting, and the comic strip — traditionally a vehicle of fantastic exploration.” The scale and treatment of the works is meant to encompass the viewer.
The immediate references for this series include late De Kooning, Frank Stella, Al Held, Jack Kirby, - a mix of abstract expressionism and comic-book graphic form.