In "Transoceanic," Grazioso transforms the fingerprint of his Italian grandfather into a painterly landscape of migration and memory.
The work originates with the collection of the “sitters” fingerprint pattern, by pressing the finger numerous times till the ink is exhausted, revealing each grain's reiteration. Through repeated impressions, Grazioso extracts organic geometries. Which he later translates into abstract compositions that evoke shifting geographies and personal cartographies.
Here, swirling contours and intersecting arcs map a biomorphic terrain—both bodily and topographic. Blues, greens, and ochres circulate like ocean currents and coastlines, while embedded forms recall vessels, sails and luggage. Grazioso uses the motif of bags and boats, as a metaphor for passage and inheritance. The result is a psychic seascape, one that anchors the viewer in the migratory journey of the artist’s grandfather, who left Southern Italy for the Americas.
Painted on an unstretched canvas, the work embraces material vulnerability. The exposed edges and visible staples resist the containment of the frame, echoing the artist’s interest in nomadism, adaptability, and diasporic history. Like skin, the raw canvas bears the traces of movement and memory. These tactile vignettes function as visual archives, where the intimate imprint of a finger becomes a portal into generational legacy.
In Transoceanic, the personal becomes topological, the fingerprint becomes geography, and the act of painting becomes a form of migration in itself.
Here, swirling contours and intersecting arcs map a biomorphic terrain—both bodily and topographic. Blues, greens, and ochres circulate like ocean currents and coastlines, while embedded forms recall vessels, sails and luggage. Grazioso uses the motif of bags and boats, as a metaphor for passage and inheritance. The result is a psychic seascape, one that anchors the viewer in the migratory journey of the artist’s grandfather, who left Southern Italy for the Americas.
Painted on an unstretched canvas, the work embraces material vulnerability. The exposed edges and visible staples resist the containment of the frame, echoing the artist’s interest in nomadism, adaptability, and diasporic history. Like skin, the raw canvas bears the traces of movement and memory. These tactile vignettes function as visual archives, where the intimate imprint of a finger becomes a portal into generational legacy.
In Transoceanic, the personal becomes topological, the fingerprint becomes geography, and the act of painting becomes a form of migration in itself.