Enjoy over 90 pieces of work from the safety of your home
What to do when you can’t get your audience to a physical artspace? You launch a digital exhibition, of course! This is exactly what artist Ray Piscopo did with OPUS 20XX, anexhibition comprising 90 works of art that can be explored for free from the safety of your home.
OPUS 20XX, is being held exclusively online, with the 90 works of art exhibited in a digital, 360°-explorable art gallery complete with accompanying music. Free of charge to view, artist Ray Piscopo hopes to take art straight into the home of anyone currently stuck inside due to COVID-19.
“Being constrained by circumstances, I’ve been spending a lot of time indoors, painting and sharing my work on social media. Yet, while it’s nice to see a painting on your newsfeed, this format completely takes art out of its context – the viewer doesn’t get that ‘quiet time’ with a painting needed to analyse the brushstrokes and dissect its theme,” Piscopo, who is a former engineer, explains.
“It’s for this reason that I wanted to go a step further and take my art into the digital realm in a big way, through a digital art gallery that lets users explore the art I have created at their own pace.”
Most of the 90 works of art, the majority of which have been created over the past year and a half, and which were meant to be part of a real-life exhibition this year, are now adorning the digital walls of an interactive art gallery divided into six zones and an open area that features examples of the different themes and styles on display.
The canon of work featured includes some of the artist’s most-provocative and loved themes, including Maltese landscapes, figurative art, and complementary abstractions, as well as works from the Credit Card Collection, for which Ray used a credit card to employ a swiping technique to apply the paint.
“Artist Ray Piscopo has had a very successful engineering career – a true homo faber – but now he is also producing interesting works of art; things of beauty that are a joy to so many. His new project of setting up a virtual art gallery to make art available to a wider public is not only valid, but also highly commendable,” says Fr Marius Zerafa, the Former Director of the Museums Department, the author of Caravaggio Diaries, one of the key figures in the recovery of Caravaggio’s St Jerome, and a talented and passionate artist in his own right.
For artist Ray Piscopo, this is the latest step in an artistic journey that has spanned five decades and which has seen him go from amateur painter to curator to internationally-featured artist. Indeed, he has taken part in many international art meetings and solo local exhibitions, and has curated over 24 exhibitions which helped established and emerging artists exhibit their work for free at a leading local hotel.
Artist Ray Piscopo was also one of the coordinator for the Healing Arts Committee at the Mater Dei Hospital, together with Fr Marius Zerafa and others, before its inauguration, and was entrusted with the task of embellishing all public spaces within the hospital with suitable art works as a form of therapy.
“Art can tremendously affect our mood, which is why it’s so important at this time in our lives, when everything feels so tumultuous,” the artist continues. “All I hope for this exhibition is that it brings some joy to those who are doing their bit to help prevent further spread of COVID-19 by respecting social distancing and giving our health workers a fair fighting chance to save lives.”
See the exhibition by visiting artist Ray Piscopo’s official website. www.piscopoart.com.
Into visual arts? Check out this post about a sand animation of Valletta, or if you’re a bookworm, how about this book about Malta’s most amazing women or this gorgeous book with some truly luscious recipes?
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