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Carlo ProiettoItalian artist Carlo Proietto has been a forerunner in elevating the technique of pyrography (the art of decorating wood orleather with heated tools or flame) into a fine art form. Within his work, he uses the utmost simplicity to convey deep passionsand forms of expressionism within figurative and surrealistic styles. The fiery technique he favors for etching out his designs notonly results in purely original works but also lends another layer of symbolism and meaning to each image. Through Proietto’sunique approach, expressionistic reflections of pain and conflict are reconfigured as a meaningful emotive visual language, bothliterally and figuratively, through the transformational power of fire.Proietto’s monochromatic creations (at times offset by solitary splashes of color) are defined by his careful use of line and formwithin judiciously composed surrealistic scenes. Lines are clean against visually stark tableaux, lending a sense of drama tothe overall effect. The artist traces his source of inspiration to contemporarymusic and video games, and this is reflected in the purely modern graphicelements that come to define each piece. Yet a strong energy underliesthe two-dimensional look of this stylistic approach, fleshing each figuralcomposition out in a burst of passionate expressionism.Within his pyrographic art, Proietto is able to create an entirely new mythologyreflective of the human experience within the highly urbanized, industrialcontext we have all come to know. In boxlike montages (a layout that mimicsthe modern graphic novel), we see glimpses of humans struggling with themechanisms of the outer world. Amid the imposed order of straight linesand geometric forms, chaos and tension persist as his subjects continue aninternal struggle to come to terms with the world into which they have beenborn.Carlo Proietto currently lives and works in Foggia, Italy. He has publishedtwo books on pyrography as a contemporary art form.www.carloproietto.itwww.Agora-Gallery.com/ArtistPage/Carlo_Proietto.aspxCarlo in his StudioGeisha Pyrography 86” x 54”Farfalle Pyrography 38” x 50”23 ARTisSpectrum