Tag: Evanescent Rumour

b. 1978, Canada
www.tonyromano.ca

Tony Romano studied Intermedia Arts (BFA) at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He has exhibited internationally at such venues as Oakville Galleries (Oakville, Ontario); Articule (Montréal, Québec); MacLaren Art Gallery (Barrie, Ontario); and Blackwood Gallery at the University of Toronto (Toronto, Ontario).

What is at rest is easy to hold;
What has not given a sign is easy to plan for;
The brittle is easily scattered;
Act on it before it comes into being;
Order it before it turns into chaos;
…Those who act on it ruin it;
Those who hold on to it lose it…
He learns not to learn and return to what the masses pass by;
He could help all things to be natural, yet he dare not do it.
~Te-Tao Ching, Chapter 64

FADO inaugurates its newest performance art series, Public Places / Private Spaces, with a 4-day window performance by artist Tony Romano. Evanescent Rumour uses personal memory as the departure point for a meditation on both the functionality and aesthetics of visual communication. The artist will sit in a storefront window for four days drawing images based on a specific memory. Audience members will be able to watch the artist drawing and view his drawings on a monitor through a live video feed, but as each image is completed, the previous one will be obscured, erased – in a word, shredded. In the end, only one image will remain. What will we glean from these images, and how will the making of them alter the artist’s own understanding of the event they attempt to portray?

Romano writes of this work:

This piece deals with the validity and quality of memory… Memory exists, but how certain can one be about its truth? How free are one’s ideas from emotions, physical environment, customs and habits? …In the process of receiving, storing, recalling and communicating, the idea becomes over simulated, fragmented and distorted. This evanescent cycle leads to false analogies, which become one’s reality.The wall between the subjective and objective (private & public) is created by mediation. My work serves as a tool to investigate reality and its make up. I wish to erase the walls between “art” and “reality”, bringing to light illusion, which is the grand mysterious reality of life. We live in a world surrounded by a trompe-l’oeil. In the spirit of the iconoclasts, I wish to break down all analogies that have served as the foundations of Western Culture. We have lost mystery and have constructed reality.

Image © Tony Romano, Evanescent Rumour, 2000. Photo by Paul Couillard.

Public Spaces / Private Places was a 3-year long international performance art series featuring 22 projects, created by 26 artists, from Canada, the US, Europe and Asia. The series explored the elements that turn neutral ‘space’ into meaningful ‘place’ through performances that examined the degrees of intimacy, connection and interaction that mark the dividing line between public and private. The series was particularly focused on performances created for intimate audiences. Some projects featured site-specific or installational environments that invited participants into a sensory or experiential journey. Others were process-oriented, involving public intervention, intimate gestures, or actions that were, by their nature, nearly invisible. Above all, the series explored the points where identity and geography intersect to generate meaning.

2002–2003
Walking and Getting Rid of Something by Kirsten Forkert
Promenades by Sylvie Cotton
The Rootless Man by Iwan Wijono
Disposition by Adina Bar-On

2001–2002
Talking to my Horse by Archer Pechawis
A Gathering for Her by Reona Brass
Mettachine (Sequence 1) by Louise McKissick
Feu de Joie by Randy & Berenicci
Open Surgery by Oreet Ashery & Svar Simpson
Remembrance Day by Johanna Householder
Disclosure by Undo
Meridian by Marilyn Arsem
One Stitch in Time by Devora Newmark

2000–2001
The Addmore Session by Istvan Kantor
spoken house by Otiose
Public Web by Tagny Duff
Numb/Hum: A Subterranean Metropolitan Opera by Christine Carson
Between Us by Jerzy Onuch
Ethel: Bloodline by Louise Liliefeldt
where do I go from here? by Stefanie Marshall
Urban Disco Trailer by Jinhan Ko
Evanescent Rumour by Tony Romano

The Public Spaces / Private Places series presented 22 performance projects between 2000–2003, and was curated by Paul Couillard.