Ricco/Maresca welcomes Marcos Bontempo back with Among the Living, an exhibition of recent works on paper. Hybrid creatures emerge from restless strokes and mottled pigment, while finely drawn human figures bring a new immediacy to his painterly universe.
Bontempo gives these figures rooms to inhabit and improbable companions to encounter. Against fields of black, rust red, and ochre, a couch assumes the gravity of an altar. Mortality has a shoulder one can touch; devotion can assume an acrobatic pose. Cages, open or closed, keep the promise of freedom suspended.
The figures seem to know more about their exchanges than we do. Solemnity and absurdity keep close company in this private theater. With the sweep of a brush and the quick intelligence of a line, Bontempo makes the impossible feel intimately familiar.
Ricco/Maresca