This week, the Philippe Labaune Gallery introduced “Together” to the art district’s community. Critics and art lovers packed the small gallery to take in the 16 acrylic paintings in Ponzi’s new collection. A traditional medium for a not-so-traditional process.
Ponzi’s process began with pen and paper: “I began by writing some diary pages, as if two people had written them in secret and I had stolen them and read them and made paintings of them.” Then, explained Ponzi, he constructed his works digitally through Adobe Photoshop, playing around with shapes and colors. Once each image was finalized, he painted it by hand on canvas. A unique process that combines the flexibility of digital experimentation with traditional painting techniques.
In one painting, titled “The First Time,” a young couple meets in an empty park, bathed in a glow of green light as sunshine gushes in from above through the thick foliage. The story told is that of two young people “taking measure of each other’s intimate speace, trying to decifer each word, each gesture to understand whether there will be a relationship or whether it will just be a meeting like many others.” Though initially hesitant to admit it, Ponzi says he crowned this piece as his favorite.
“The First Time” embodies the spirit of the entire collection: “The goal of the exhibition is to tell the story of a relationship between two people…the emotions you feel while living in a relationship,” said Ponzi.
In another piece, “Circular Path,” Ponzi tells a much bleaker story. The overwhelmingly gray painting shows a dejected young man holding a bouquet of pink flowers close to the wet asphalt as rain pools around his feet and a few petals float to the ground. The woman in the background appears to be walking away from him.
“We continually fall into the same repeated mistakes, our unhealed weaknesses ever present,” states the painting’s description.
“Together” took only 6 months to complete from start to finish. Each individual piece, on average, was created in 3-7 days. The accelerated timeline is part of Ponzi’s process: “I believe in throwing yourself into a project and doing it very intensely in order to be able to keep alive the propulsive energy that moves you at the beginning.”
This propulsive energy, says Ponzi, was at its core very simple: “After all, I’m talking about emotions that we all feel and have felt.”
The exhbition will be open to the public until December 21st.
