20th Century Decay #13 (Industrial Courtyard)
by David Murgio United States (US)

I painted and drew in college and have continued on and off for many years since. In the past, mostly abstractions, both large and small. Then, scaled architectural drawings and figures. My primary aesthetic interest from the beginning has been to carve negative spaces from energetic worlds constructed of varied and lively marks. My current work is about exploring the juxtaposition of complex, human-made systems to the empty voids that surround and pierce through them. I found this subject matter in the summer of 2020, in my fourth month of pandemic-induced semi-isolation, when a parked motorcycle drew me in - in particular, how the interlocking components of the engine, exhaust and electrical systems framed an array of oddly shaped negative spaces. . Wanting more, I began to search out images of industrial and architectural settings – greater mechanical complexity and a wider variety of negative spaces. But rather than recreating the pristine map of industrial engineering and know-how, I find myself attracted to depicting the breakdown of what was once a perfectly ordered highly complex system.