To look at the works of Dana Piazza is to look at pulsing, breathing art – art with free will. The artist, who is based in Lenox, Massachusetts, has a flair for creating art pieces the results of which are unimagined, unconceived and unknown. As the hand progresses with a pen on canvas and paper, the nuances of human movement are what grant the work its physicality. Rather than being representational, Piazza’s pieces are strongly algorithmic. The two dimensional works appear as though in movement, in motion, deceiving the eyes of awe-stricken spectators.
All the works by Dana Piazza follow a preconceived algorithm, a pattern or a shape the artist chooses to work with. These can be lines, curves, letters and more.
Rules for each work are determined beforehand, a set of instructions in place before he begins creating. The artist starts with a single shape; the next mark will be inherited from its predecessor. This goes on, and on.
Irregularities are inevitable, gentle tweaks in the movement of the hand are merely human. But this change in a mark will be the imprint for the next, and the change in that mark the father of its next. Culmination is reached when the paper ends, and the gentle ripples in designs end up creating something not previously known.
At its deepest, these artworks allow an exploration of chance, of destiny and of time.
They show us the gentle relation between formation and deformation, between shape and distortion, between control and chaos. To let the art create itself, devoid of human control, is granting art what it truly was created for. If art must have free will, first of all, should not art itself be freely willed?
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