(Editor’s note: This is a 2015 story that I’m posting because Cincinnati Art Museum just put up Marioni’s “Red Painting” in its new acquisitions gallery — SR)
By STEVEN ROSEN / CINCINNATI CITYBEAT / MARCH 3, 2015 ISSUE
Marioni is a purist — a painter’s painter whose quest to make art isn’t about being decorative or interpretive, but rather is a search for light — Liquid Light, as his show is called.
By Steven Rosen on Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 1:00 pm
“Red Painting” by Joseph Marioni
Joseph Marioni, the Cincinnati-born, New York-based artist who is showing relatively recent paintings at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning, does not consider his single-color-dominated, non-representational canvases to be “monochromatic” or “abstract.”
And he certainly doesn’t refer to the work as pictures. They are paintings, and he finds it unfortunate that word and “picture” have become interchangeable when talking about art. Because “picture” implies that a painting depicts something. “Abstract” even implies it’s a stylized visual interpretation of something — from a tree to a state of mind.
As Marioni says in a written statement that’s part of the DAAP show’s wall text, those are straightjacketed views of art. “The function of the paint itself is not to present some other thing; it’s to carry pigment,” he says. “And pigment divides light. So, in one form or another all paintings are fundamentally membranes of divided light.”
As might be guessed from this, Marioni is a purist — a painter’s painter whose quest to make art isn’t about being decorative or interpretive, but rather is a search for light — Liquid Light, as his show is called. His method is to layer acrylic paint on stretched linen until he knows he’s done.
As such, it marks him as an untrendy artist. Born here in 1943, he attended DAAP’s architecture school and the Art Academy of Cincinnati before going to the San Francisco Art Institute. In 1972, he made New York his home. (Today he also has a studio in Pennsylvania.)
“I’m a throwback,” he says in a recent interview at DAAP’s Reed Gallery, while surveying the installation of his show. “I’m an old guy in terms of what the new modern kids think. I make a medium-specific modern art form. Kids today don’t want those labels put on them. They want to be able to say anything can be a painting. But there is some fundamental, intrinsic essence to each [art] form, and I’m working in painting and the natural boundaries that I see.”
This exhibit, consisting of 10 acrylic paintings on stretched linen, came about after Aaron Cowan, DAAP Galleries director, presented the abstract paintings of William McGee in 2013. Assistant art professor Morgan Thomas, who co-curated this show, suggested he display work by Marioni, who had never had an exhibit in Cincinnati devoted to what DAAP refers to as his “mature work.” He has a large 1970 work in the collection of the Cincinnati Art Museum.
It’s easy to see why Marioni’s work so often is considered monochromatic. Each painting looks all of one evenly applied color, at least at first (and even second) glance. And the titles of these 10 paintings reinforce that impression: “Green Painting,” “White Painting,” “Yellow Painting,” “Red Painting,” “Turquoise Blue Painting,” “Ochre Painting” and so on.
But looking closely reveals there is far more to the works — a couple of which are very big at eight feet — than meets the superficial glance.
The first place to look is at a corner. For instance, on 2008’s golden “Ochre Painting,” paint stops just short of an edge and reveals a hint of red sneaking out from underneath. If you then follow that upward, you can see the shadows of the darker color underneath the ochre. And with a little distance, you see the ghosts of drips underneath.
But there is more. The way that light shines on and from a finished work — as it does on, say, 2001’s large “White Painting” — adds an entirely new presence. There is magic here in the way Marioni’s paintings make light seem three-dimensionally real.
To paint, he prepares a color blend — usually one of the primary colors or a variation — and applies it as a base to his canvas. For this, he uses a roller.
Then comes a body color, usually more translucent, and on top goes a transparent glaze to build a surface light. The process is a physical one as Marioni uses brushes, fingers and small tools to move paint around. You can see the evidence of that movement if you take the time to look deeply.
“I’m trying to present the personality of the color in all of its richness so it’s not just a flat plain color,” Marioni says. “It has nuances, volume, and movement in terms of the spectral shifting of its light. So the final object on the wall is an image of the color.”
https://www.citybeat.com/arts/new-show-at-daap-captures-liquid-light–12180128
Steven Rosen's Writings 
