what dreams may come

"“Man is essentially a story-telling animal…but the key question for men is not about their own authorship; I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’ - Alasdair MacIntyre , After Virtue

Yet, sometimes, the story in which we find ourselves falls apart - the brutal and unforgiving appearance of the absurd tears the pages of that story apart ; heartbreak, loss, and disappointment, can suddenly leave us feeling the key that once unlocked the very meaning of our lives has not only slipped through our fingers but is now pulling us down with it into the abyss. Of course, when we’re suddenly sitting around the shattered pieces of our lives or surrounded by faint memories of our past haunting us like ghosts, one option is despair: accept the unraveling of life and succumb to the abyss. 

With collage, Giacomo Viscardi has found that despair is not the only option when we can no longer answer the question “of what story do I find myself a part?”. After collecting newspapers, flowers, magazines, books, and other found materials from the 19th - 21st centuries, Viscardi mirrors the break down of meaning we can face in our own lives: the source materials are cut out from their original works, person and place are evicted from the art which they once found themselves and the webs of meaning and original context are sliced through with an Exacto knife. Yet, Viscardi does not just leave the pieces as cut-outs, he births them anew:  individual materials suddenly find themselves reincarnated in new worlds of oil, gouache, and acrylic. Thrown onto canvas, wood panel, cardboard , and paper, cutouts created across three centuries and collected from travels through the Americas and Europe now find themselves intertwined and speaking in new worlds, new webs of meaning, new art. 

Giacomo Viscardi is a Houston based reconstructionist who weaves 19th - 21st century found materials into windows that allow us to see more deeply into our pasts, our presents, and our futures. Viscardi believes that within the memories of our past and the broken scattered pieces of our lives in the present, there lie the clues to what dreams may come, if only we will their reconstruction. 

His exhibition, “What Dreams May Come” is at Simone on Sunset from August 15 - October 15 in Houston, Texas.