Pratt in Venice alum Alessandro Levato (PiV ‘18) has recently completed an MFA from the New York Academy of Art. We recently sat down with Alessandro, who shared thoughts on his artistic practice, memories of Venice, and ideas on future directions in his work.
Alessandro Levato (PiV ‘18) at work in his studio.
Pratt in Venice: What have you been up to since Pratt in Venice and graduating from Pratt Institute?
Alessandro Levato: Since Pratt in Venice I have been able to explore different mediums and processes of working. I have gotten a Masters in Art Law at Christie's Auction House NY, and a Masters in Fine Arts at The New York Academy of Art. Using both of these areas of study I was able to study the business side of the art world and art market as well as apply that to the work that to the current body of work. It allowed me to see a broader view of the contemporary world.
PiV: Could you describe your artistic practice a bit?
AL: My current practice is painting that is based in printmaking. Through the use of Monoprinting, I use oil sticks on plexiglass and press the painting onto paper using a printing press. The works not only have meaning within the image of the self portrait but the physicality of the technique I use, directly relates to the 'trans'fer of information. The transformation being multiple images that are selectively deconstructed and reconstructed to create the final image. This is how I translate my identity.
Alessandro Levato, Keeping Score, 2022. Oil stick and paint on Evolon AP paper, 80 x 50 in.
PiV: What do you remember most vividly from Venice?
AL: What I remember most from Venice (besides falling in love with Drue [Schwarz, PiV ‘18]) is spending time in both the painting studio and printmaking studio. The Scuola Grafica was a place where I first really explored monoprinting with watercolor crayons. The simplicity of using a large stick of color to create an image with multiple sticks of color is very interesting to me. Very immediate and direct.
PiV: Where do you see you/your work going next?
AL: Towards the end of my MFA, expanding from just being a painting major, I started to explore painting as an object. I created an image that needed to be an aerial view and I built the image into a table top to break free of the binding roles of a painting. It was a self portrait in a field of grass. I used transparent blue plexiglass so that my image was only visible through the hands of the machine. This plexi has cutouts of hand drawn and machine cut clouds. These clouds are simplified forms of body parts. I am integrating the machine because I am only a body through synthetically made testosterone. I am hand and machine made. The viewer's position of viewing me through a machine made natural landscape forces the body to go so far into nature that there is no gender. It forces the viewer to see my self portrait as nature just as it forces the viewer to be confronted with a table that has cloud formation holes on the surface. I see my work expanding along these lines to transition painting past its own boundaries.
