Trained as an architect, Mr. Scarpa’s emergence in the art world is fairly recent, but his work has drawn immediate praise. Ask Scarpa “Who are you?” and he will reply, “I’m an artist! I see myself as an artist who happens to love building.” While he considers architecture an art form, too, he says, “I tend to think of it as designing around someone else. I’m making it for other people. When you make art, you basically can do whatever you want. Making art is autobiographical, abstract and self revealing.”
Working as artist, the architect is free, to use John Ruskin’s term, to rediscover his/her “innocent eye,” to see swatches of color without reflecting on significance. For Scarpa painting is both an extension of, and a diversion to, the practice of architecture. His work explores the ordinary in the extraordinary and seeks to establish rich connections for those who experience it—a layering of the ephemeral with the permanent that parallels the notion of multiplicity, creating vibrancy beyond the nature of the individual.
Scarpa’s artwork is tactile. Entwined in its encounter are memory, experience and the senses. Like the cumulative nature of experience, Scarpa naturally incorporates conditions and effects where senses cross, blur, switch, and merge. His work explores the ostensibly insignificant impact of the indeterminate on the whole, the tension between the comforting and the random and a structure of orderliness layered with the impermanent or random capturing the sensations of gravity, balance, and motion.
Scarpa’s work also emphasizes the experience of making. The object is important but the experience also has a profound impact and leaves something that lasts well beyond the mere physical and visual formation. Surprising discoveries occur more frequently when the process of discovery takes precedence, emphasizing the exploration. Because of this, he employs a process that is open ended: experimental and exploratory.
Some works are about the experience of making. Some are intuitive fantasies. Some are ambiguous and raise the question of visual language. Some deal with the problem of consistency. Lastly and perhaps most importantly in this body of work is visual delight, whose purpose is to answer nothing but to provoke visual stimulus so that the observer begins to become more acutely aware of the experience to which they has been subjected.
SHOWS AND EXHIBITIONS
The Four Seasons Restaurant, New York, NY 2010
Modern Views, Chicago, IL 2010
Modern Views, New York, NY 2010
18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica, CA 2009
Gwangiu Bienalle, South Korea 2009
Villa Necchi-Campiglio, Milan, Italy 2009
Yale University, New Haven, CT 2009
Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, LA 2008
One Haworth Center Gallery, Holland, MI 2008
Sacramento State University Arts Festival, Sacramento, CA 2008
Broadway 15th Street, Santa Monica, CA (installation) 2008
Architecture and Design Museum, Los Angeles, CA 2008
Florida Outdoor Sculpture Exhibit, City of Lakeland, Florida (installation) 2006
Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA 2006
City of Santa Monica, CA, Cloverpark (installation) 2006
National Building Museum, Washington, DC 2005
University of Waterloo, Toronto, Canada 2005
Polk Museum of Art, Lakeland, FL 2005
Architecture and Design Museum, Los Angeles, CA 2005
National Building Museum, Washington, DC 2004
Architecture and Design Museum, Los Angeles, CA 2004
Feldman Gallery, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 2001
Yale University, New Haven, CT 1998
Clyde Street Gallery, Portland, OR 1993
Gallery of Functional Art, Santa Monica, CA 1990
University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 1989
San Diego Design Center, San Diego, CA 1989
Tolarno Gallery, Melbourne, Australia 1988
Gallery of Functional Art, Santa Monica, CA 1987
COLLECTIONS
The Art of Friendship, Haworth Collection, Holland, MI
Van Der Sys McClosky Family Collection, Philadelphia, PA
Lindsey Family Collection, St. Louis, MO
Huber Collection, Fayetteville, AK
Gilmore Family Collection, Los Angeles, CA
Cordic Family Collection, Los Angeles, CA
Fishman Family Collection, Mill Valley, CA
Gwangiu Collection, South Korea
Villa Necchi Collection, Milan, Italy
La Vecchia Guardia Collection, Vicenza, Italy
Francesco Cappellari Collection, Vicenza, Italy
Arnaldi Family Collection, Milan, Italy
Burke Family Collection, Starkville, MS
McRae Collection, Knoxville, TN
Thom Mayne Collection, Santa Monica, CA
Myhr Family Collection, Los Angeles, CA
Craig Borum Collection, Ann Arbor, MI
Rubin Family Collection, Philadelphia, PA
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