Stibio’s compositions are carefully formulated, non-allegorical landscape paintings. Refusing to go along with the inherited and persisting image of an alienated human presence in an excluding hostile environment, Stibio instead invites us to approach the landscape in a more open manner.
By using strips of shredded documents and paper, which he layers onto the canvas, his images are full of movement, mutating and transforming like that of a mirage in a desert, creating a space for self-projection. These paintings do not conform to pre-existing ideas of what a landscape should be. Instead they choose to render its multiplicity – not just fear-invoking magnitude, but also its fragility and intimacy.
Flinders Lane Gallery
August 21 to September 8, 2012
Melbourne
Flesh of the Coastal Fire Trail, 2012, natural pigments, shredded documents and rice paper on canvas, 132 x 142cm
Courtesy the artist and Flinders Lane Gallery