gostworks: the art of brian d'agosta

Elevations From Dystopia is a new 4-piece series that I just completed during the course of a week. My process started with a loose pen sketch, which I do just to work out ideas or techniques. After a few weeks, I had gone back through my workbook and really liked some of the forms that had come out of the sketch and wondered what it might look like done in color with paint. I have been consciously trying to loosen up my style over the past few years in order to get more movement, energy and motion from my work. Intentional distress, randomness and loose, sloppy lines have a place in most of what I do. I really admire the work of some of the German Expressionists whose output captures exactly what I have been, in spirit, attempting to achieve.

The content of these is obviously architecture, which isn’t subject matter I work with, but have an interest in. That said, these buildings from a backwards, Orwellian world have elements of humanity. They have a soul. I liked the idea of using architectural elements from various places and was really drawn to these big, ominous Cathedrals, Mosques and pyramids to get the basic structures in place. I’ve always thought that the Cologne Cathedral is one of the most looming structures ever built and used that throughout. Also in my forethoughts were the Kutna Hora Ossuary, many of Zdzislaw Beksinski’s works, and random readings of dystopian and totalitarian societies where some of these could have been built. Going through each piece from left to right, Elevation 1 is sort of a Ministry of (Dis)information, Elevation 2 is the Municipal Ossuary, Elevation 3 the Office of Internal Affairs, and Elevation 4 being the War Council.

These were done on 16×20 canvasses with acrylics, metallic acrylics, water. ©2011.