John Dante Bianchi

John Dante Bianchi: People have always asked me if I’m a sculptor or a painter because I make ostensibly sculptures that hang on the wall. I’ve always been a sculptor first and a painter second and I’ve used painting as a language to enhance and make more dynamic the sculptural process. I started making art really early on as a kid because I loved working with my hands, I loved, you know, playing with different materials and I spent a lot of time outside building things. And I think art came about as a way to make things that I imagined. I could take this material and that material and literally make anything I wanted, which was in a way my own special power. I think the idea of ritual in the painting process is really interesting; setting up the paints in a certain way, setting up the materials in a certain way, actually going through a very methodical process of building up the paint layers, sanding them down, building them up, sanding them down again, until I achieve a surface that I’m pleased with. What I’m most interested in the work and in working in Brooklyn is the fact that its always transforming, always changing, and it’s a way to embrace that change and to embrace that transformation.