James Iannone

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Stochastic Duality  
2022-23



Using two circles as my starting point I meditate on what might go into, and or come out of these two circles. Not just anything, something that had been bothering me. I don’t confront the things that worry me in my work generally. I don’t consider myself a political artist. I don’t bother with the sways of the ‘pendulum’ either way in my work. But this subject, the global climate crisis that we are on the verge of is quite concerning. Ever since I was young I thought we would fix the wrongs that the post WWII generation had wrought. We would have a utopian society without war, and clean drinking water and air to breathe, but no, almost none of this would transpire. We find ourselves in a very serious situation. Earth Day was born the same year I was. My anxiety was gnawing at me after I found a box of nature magazines on the street while walking my dog. The box had a sign on it, “good for collage”. I took that as a challenge. I got to work. I cut out 15 CM circles and affixed them onto the work surface, with another circle drawn, juxtaposed or overlapping it. I had a self imposed limited color palette and limited range of tools and materials at my disposal to start laying out the images for this series. I worked on four at a time, all next to each other. Systematically going back and forth. There are 8 works to each suite with four suites for a total of 24 in the series.  All pieces are roughly


1. “An impression of an artist’s paitning of a syne”
acrylic on paper
2. “Untitled” (monotype)
acrylic on paper
3. “Untitled” (monotype)
acrylic on paper
4. “Unlisted”
mixed media collage on paper
5. “Sub-Surface Transmissions”
Mixed media collage on paper
6. “Thermonuclear Transmission”
Mixed media collage on paper
7. “Microscopic Constellations”
Mixed media collage on paper
8. “Chroma”
Mixed media collage on paper
9. “Mycorrhizal”
Mixed media collage on paper
10. “Consume Prussian Blue” Mixed media collage on paper
11. “Zebra”
Mixed media collage on paper
12. “BP Oil Spill”
Mixed media collage on paper 
13. “Xylem”
Mixed media collage on paper
14. “Sudden Collapse Furnace” Mixed media collage on paper
15. “Untitled” 
Mixed media collage on paper 
16. “Untitled” (pineal)
Mixed media collage on paper
17. “Geologic Time”
Mixed media collage with mylar on paper
18. “Untitled”
Mixed media collage on paper 
19. “Eclipse of Sacrament”
Mixed media collage on paper
20. “Superposition on the Hypersurface”
Mixed media collage with ferric chlorid on paper
21. “Untitled” (call of the marsh wren)
Mixed media collage with shed snake skin on paper 
22. “Untitled”
Mixed media collage on paper
23. “Untitled” (eyeline)
Mixed media collage with mylar on paper
24.”Extraction
Mixed media collage on paper 
25. “Untitled”
Mixed media collage on paper 
26. “Untitled” (fall of the Zooxanthellae)
Mixed media collage on paper 
27. “Untitled” (Panther)
28. “Catch”
Mixed media collage on paper


While dealing with multi-media techniques and reacting to the interplay of the chemical reactions as well as the color, line and forms  in each group I could explore what these images represented to me with regards to the material I was using in the moment. Reacting to the previous stages of the piece, the way the liquid dries or the way a group of marks appears, I will make decisions quickly at times and stopping at others, waiting to find a way forward then I can continue. While pulling from the magazine images I could explore the visual limits of the whole piece.
The idea of stochasticity is to me is chaos within a system that is confined to the system for example: how you can’t predict the weather no more than a couple days in advance at most. With all the telemetry and modern science we have at our disposal, it’s quite impossible to predict because of stochasticity.

It’s not Doomsday yet, but it’s close.

©1987—2023

Providence, Rhode Island