Untitled, acrylic on canvas

Giorgio Viva is an Italian artist currently based in the United States. Viva’s practice is varied, with the artist producing both visual art and music. Viva’s visual art portfolio showcases a fascination with geometric form and pattern.

Untitled, acrylic on canvas

I really enjoy Viva’s abstract paintings. The works are wildly colourful, and often utilize repeated forms like lines or other, more organic interlocking shapes, to present a wide spectrum of pigment across a series of uniform planes. The resulting is work that’s reminiscent of op art by Bridget Riley, or of the abstract colour palette of works by Melvin Clark. I also appreciate the way Viva plays with pattern and repetition -- in some works, he sets up an apparent repeating pattern structure, only to have that pattern decay or morph into another form entirely, something like the changes in music.

This sense of musical potential in each of the works lends the abstractions a kind of personality, an intrinsic presence that belies their purely formalistic expression.

Untitled, acrylic on canvas