From Fairground to Fireworks

“I am interested in process, for it is through process that I am able to connect
to a deeper meaning in my artwork.”
Rosemarie Fiore

The processes the New York based artist Rosemarie Fiore employs are not those usually associated with the painting process. With a fascination that alludes to the action painting, Fiore uses a wide variety of mechanisms that range from fairground rides to pin ball machines, from windshield wipers to fireworks to make the marks that define her practice.

As she told the Don’t Panic Magazine “I am very interested in technology-based systems that generate marks. The technology that I work with is popular and common. I‘ve worked with arcade games (video and pinball), cars and fire trucks, floor polishers, lawn mowers, amusement park rides, hand guns, waffle irons and land-based fireworks. I find ways to capture the marks these mechanisms make over periods of time through drawing, painting, sculpture, photography or video. The images they create are fascinating because they are never what I would have expected. Playing pinball on my Evel Knievel Pinball machine generated elongated skull-like images. Large (40 ft x 40 ft) spyrographic images where created by turning a “Scrambler” amusement park ride into a drawing machine.”

The 43 year old artist elaborated about working with machines saying “For me, the challenge in collaborating with machines is to find ways to guide, harness, and ultimately transform their expected and repetitive movements into interesting imagery. Each type of machine has a specific movement and produces a specific and unique signature mark. I try to respect that mark. Depending on the machine, I can alter those marks to various degrees through my interventions. It is within this confine that I am able to explore the relationship between control and chance.”

Although for the last half dozen years Fiore has been exploring this relationship by concentration on works created with fireworks.

About which she told the Atlantic’s Daily Dish “My firework drawings are created by containing and controlling firework explosions. I bomb blank sheets of paper with different fireworks including color smoke bombs, jumping jacks, monster balls, fountains, magic whips, spinning carnations, ground blooms, rings of fire and lasers. As I work, I create imagery by controlling the chaotic nature of the explosions in upside-down containers. When the paper becomes saturated in color, dark and burned, I take it back to my studio and collage blank paper circles onto the image to establish new planes and open up the composition. I then continue to bomb the pieces. These actions are repeated a number of times. The final works contain many layers of collaged explosions and are thick and heavy.”

Fiore’s current exhibition of her latest firework generated works Smoke Eclipse is one show at Los Angeles Von Lintel Gallery until the 31^st of December.