Painting the Printed Word, an exhibition of mixed media wall constructions by painter Joan Giordano, reflects not only her mastery with the paint brush and the art of printmaking and Japanese papermaking, but likewise her steadfast impassioned interest in newspapers’ printed text, will open at the June Kelly Gallery, 166 Mercer Street, New York, on Friday, January 7.  The exhibition will remain on view through February 26, 2022.

Archival international newspapers are basic elements of Giordano’s sculptural constructions.  Having adopted collage as her process she meticulously composes compositions in which the printed word, color, and volume make absorbing alliances.  In the pushing of limits and exquisite positioning of her materials, Giordano achieves volumetrically complex arrangements of surfaces with newspaper rolls, found papers, corrugated board, graphite, paint, and encaustic.  Interwoven is the sense of time in both historical and contemporary thought.

It has been said, Giordano can turn an abstract work of art toward the political without making direct inferences.  Giordano’s art is current even as she intimates a strong connection with the modernist past.  Her selection of archival publications rivet with diverse global issues beliefs and traditions, economics, health, science, and politics.

Lily Wei, art critic and journalist writes Giordano has taken to collecting magazines, newspapers, and journals, including issues that date back decades, partly in anticipation of the demise of paper editions in the future as digital publications become increasingly the norm.  Her
signature newsprint-based works are an act of recuperation as well as one way to shelf a trove of
information within what might be seen as fantasias of the archive.

Giordano was also enamored of paper’s versatility, by what it could be made to represent.  Versatility includes malleability, paper’s ability to assume any shape desired, becoming a sculptural material in addition to serving as a two-dimensional support for imagery.  Two beautifully wrought hands in the round attached to the surface of Over the Top, 2021, made from cast paper, and, underscoring a narrative that supports feminism and economic equity, she tells me that they are the hands of a woman, a worker, writes Wei.

Text matters to Giordano, says Wei, as do titles, words that correspond to the theme of the work are often strategically highlighted.  Life of Wonderment, 2021 speaks to the statement that Giordano reminds us that these constructions are intended to be read as well as visually parsed.  When Wei asked why so many different languages are present, Giordano answered, “There are so many ways to read and write the news, to evaluate truth.”

Giordano lives and works in New York City and Roscoe, NY.  She holds a BA from Wagner College, Staten Island, and an MFA from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY.  Giordano works have been shown in numerous one-person and group exhibitions in the United States and countries throughout the world.  She is represented in numerous public and private collections including the Savannah College of Art and Design, GA; Hammond Museum & Japanese Stroll Gardens, North Salem, NY; Longview Art Museum, TX; Housatonic Museum of Art, Bridgeport, CT; New York Public Library Print Collection; Awagami Museum, Hall of AWA, Tokushima, Japan; PepsiCo, Purchase, NY; the Henry Buhl Collection, New York, and the North Carolina National Bank, Charlotte, NC.