Priska C. Juschka Fine Art is pleased to present Pyrotechnics, Rosemarie Fiore’s first solo exhibition at the gallery. Fiore’s discipline relates to the European Surrealist movement and to German Wolfgang Paalen’s method of Fumage — known as an automatic technique, whereby unpremeditated imagery is generated, when provoked by a candle held under a sheet of paper, causing soot to gather on its surface — prompting the mind to associate freely. With her own process, Fiore similarly favors this element of randomness, being subjected only to her medium’s limitations and to the source of her subconscious.

Following her own realization that fireworks, lit and thrown onto a smooth cement floor, leave chaotic marks as they spin and explode, Fiore started painting and drawing with the colorful pigments discharged by the explosives. By way of cardboard cylinders and metal cans, Fiore retains the firework explosions like specimen, restraining their movements to a constricted area on the paper and regaining a certain authority over her source. Furthermore, by tying fireworks to a large stick, she commands her medium, like any other, narrowing the potential for chance errors. Fiore concedes, however, acknowledging that “Fireworks are explosives. They are violent, destructive and chaotic in nature.”

Originally discovered in China about 2,000 years ago, fireworks, both then and now, are thought to have the power to fend off evil spirits and ghosts, by frightening them with the loud bangs of their explosions. The alchemical connotations of fireworks, exemplified by the tragic figure of Dr. Faustus, who used pyrotechnics for his experimental rituals in his quest for greater enlightenment, are immanent. Fiore’s practice alludes to these deductions while simultaneously demonstrating that, above and beyond all implications, fireworks can simply be used as a creative tool for abstract compositions of color and light.

Rosemarie Fiore was born in 1972 in Mount Kisco, NY and currently lives and works in New York City. She received her M.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL and her B.A. from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA. Fiore’s work has been the subject of several solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally, including Painting, Performance and Machines, Second Street Gallery, Charlottesville, VA (2008) and The Good-Time Mix Machine: Scrambler Drawings, Grand Arts, Kansas City, MO (2004). Fiore has gained wide recognition having created and exhibited her work in various institutions and programs, among them the Yaddo Residency, Saratoga Springs, NY (2007), the Marie Walsh Sharpe Studio Program, New York, NY (2003), Special Editions Fellowship, the Lower East Side Print Shop, New York, NY (2002), Artist in the Marketplace, the Bronx Museum, Bronx, NY (2001), Workspace Grant, Dieu Donné Papermill, New York, NY (2001) and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Fellowship, Skowhegan, ME (1999).