On View May 21 – June 19, 2022 | Southern Idiom Gallery
SECCA's Southern Idiom exhibition series continues with Fractional View, featuring new works by Roberto Palo Del Mar. An opening reception for the exhibition will be held from 1–4pm on Saturday, May 21. Admission is free, with a suggested $10 donation.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Since childhood, art has been the source of many joys for me. At a young age, I dreamt up visions that I brought to life through drawings. As a young adult, I discovered photography and found it to be a truer and sharper expression of my creativity. Living and traveling across Europe, South America, and North America has provided me immense opportunities and inspiration. Access to the world's finest museums, diversified landscapes, and robust cultures refined my artistic style and built the portfolio used in my work. I developed the sculptured approach to my photography in 2015 after visiting "Rocinha", a slum in Brazil. Standing at the top of a hill, overlooking seemingly endless small homes stacked upon one another, I found myself at a loss trying to capture the movement and dimension of the scene. The images I shot began to shift and crack before my eyes, the challenge fascinating me to create a path forward for "portraits in layers". This led me to reconnect with my past in engineering and models, resulting in the effect before you today. Using metal and acrylic as a printed canvas, this innovative self-developed approach aims to create a depth and optical effect considered impossible to achieve through photography. My hope is you find this work as light-filled, alive, and abstract as it is intended.
ARTIST BIO
Roberto Palo Del Mar was born in São Paulo, Brazil to an Italian family. He graduated college with a degree in Civil Engineering and a post graduate degree in Business, Marketing, and Finance. Many of his years that followed were spent working for his family's business and in the financial market. It was later in life, after a move to London with a family of his own, that Roberto discovered the uniqueness of his craft and began pursuing a career in the arts. Thereafter, Roberto refined his skills in Montreal and continues to create today in North Carolina.
About Southern Idiom
SECCA's Southern Idiom exhibition series launched in 2017 as a platform for elevating and celebrating the work of Winston-Salem artists. In contrast to many exhibitions at SECCA, works on view in Southern Idiom are available for purchase. Roberto Del Mar's exhibition marks the 27th installment of the series, whose alumni artists include Sharon Hardin, Terri Dowell-Dennis, Ashley Johnson, Frank Campion, Mona Wu, Owens Daniels, Jessica Singerman, Leo Rucker, Kevin Calhoun, Paul Travis Phillips, Laura Lashley, Sam "The Dot Man" McMillan, and others.