KEYES

JOHN TORREANO

John Torreano is an American artist, best known for utilizing faceted gems in a variety of mediums and methods in order to create "movement oriented perception" in his works.
Torreano grew up in a large Catholic family which influenced his artistic practice; the usage of jewels serve as a metaphor for vigil lights. Other religious influences appear in his pieces as well. In recent years his paintings have used gems to create space-like constellations. Throughout his career, Torreano has investigated the properties of real and fake gemstones in the differing contexts of lighting, placement and materials. Artist Richard Artschwager described Torreano's works as “Paintings that stand still and make you move.”

As John explains his work, “Concepts of the Universe and Astronomical images have been a rich source for my painting since 1969. I discovered, early in my journey as a painter, that ideas such as curvature and the big bang made more sense to me than contemporary art theory. Painting is both 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional, visual and physical, spatial and flat.  Oxymoronic themes thread throughout this installation with black plywood diamonds, a gold black hole and a painting about dark matter and the paradox of the infinite and finite.” 

Nationally and internationally recognized, his work has been exhibited at many museums and galleries, including: The Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder CO, Museo Ettore Fico, Turin IT, Denver Museum Of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington D.C., The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and the Indianapolis Museum of Fine Arts. He is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships including: the Nancy Graves Foundation Grant for Visual Artists, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and individual grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council of the Arts. 
Also of note; a series of paintings titled "TV Bulge" featured in the 1969 Whitney Biennial.

John resides and works in NYC NY and Sag Harbor, NY.