An inter-disciplinary artist whose work explores how the unseen affects perception, shedding light upon the effects of climate change and ramifications of metastatic pollution and consumerism
Richard Vivenzio is an inter-disciplinary artist formerly based in Brooklyn, New York who has been living in Costa Rica since the beginning of 2023. Through sculpture and installation, Vivenzio’s work explores interior and exterior space through tangible and perceived intervention. Using everyday materials along with light, shadow, and gravity, his compositions attempt to draw visual conclusions to how the unseen affects perception, exemplified by the intangible materials being as important as the physical. Using this concept, Vivenzio has shed light upon the effects of climate change and the ramifications of metastatic pollution and consumerism, while striving to create the work sustainably.
Vivenzio received an MFA in Fine Art from The School of Visual Art (SVA) in 2016. In recent years he has shown at The New House Center of Contemporary Art NY, Las Cruces Gallery at the Southwest Environmental Center NM, Rockefeller Center NY (in collaboration with The Climate Museum and The United Nations Environmental Program) and The C. Rockefeller Center (Dresden, DE). Additionally, they have been included in fairs -- Pulse Art Fair-Projects and Flux Art Fair -- and have been published in Hyperallergic, Artnet, and Time Out Magazine.
The upcoming Exhibition (Saturday, July 8th, 2023 at La Casablanca, Piedades de Santa Ana, Costa Rica), Dark Green, Deep Blue is a collection of mixed media installations that combine the natural flora and fauna of Costa Rica with plastic inflatables and cordage. These assemblages form a visual poetry of juxtaposing elements, highlighting the dangers of the new parasitic symbiosis of plastic and plants.
The work is thematically dark yet combines playful elements within an anxious presentation. Using balloons and inflatable balls -- objects that symbolize childlike innocence -- the work exemplifies the naive attitudes toward mass plastic use and the subsequent problems that arise from it. These materials are held in place by inflation, pressure, and gravity, with the ability to be popped or displaced at any time. The plastics combined with natural flora create a narrative around the cycle of microplastic aerosolization.
These compositions are at first inherently surreal, mixing objects and environments that don’t make sense when looking at the world at a surface level. Through deeper introspection, we can face the reality that these poetic exaggerations are becoming our rapidly approaching and dystopic future; one that will be inevitable without conscious societal intervention.