This exhibition of oil paintings by Raymond Sicignano depicts the ephemeral and vanishing American urban landscape which is quickly being replaced by the sterile whitewash of franchises, malls and corporate logos. His “Urban Portraits”, as he calls them, are bold, colorful renderings of cityscapes that define human elements and expressions of a city or neighborhood. They are contemporary and actual venues, confident and brazen in their revolt against the ever growing process of gentrification which, unfortunately for us all, seems to eventually win in the end. The unique and colorful character of these storefronts and businesses define the distinct personalities of the neighborhoods that they inhabit. It is this character that is the overwhelming feature that attracted the artist as well as developers to these locales, and ironically, it is the thing that targets them for destruction. Each individual painting in this exhibition provides an intimate view of everyday life at the street level that tells a uniquely individual story on its own, while the collection as a whole portrays an important, almost anthropological representation of our culture on a larger scale. The work contains a strong optimism and human presence that embodies design, language and even humor. Sicignano says of his art that for him “…painting is a necessity. It is the product of an intense impulse within me that has to be articulated. My paintings are a kind of emotional diary produced more with intuition than with rational thought. I do it to express sincere human feeling, not to please a certain tendency in art. The true subject of the paintings is the emotional content within. I feel as though I do not choose the subjects that I paint, but rather that they choose me. There is a subconscious interaction between myself and my subjects that I don't fully understand or even try to. I just respond to the existing impetus and that fuels my work.”
