Christina Gattorno
ABOUT
The Artist
Christina Gattorno was born in New York City and grew up internationally.
After viewing a Bergman film in an art museum at the age of ten, she began obsessively studying film, cinematheque, and modern art. She was heavily influenced by the camera tricks of Hitchcock, the film style of Bergman, the abstraction of Picasso, the bright poppy imagery of Warhol, the erraticness of Pollock, and the color fields of Rothko. The blending of all of these styles is the root of her colorful storytelling imagery.
The Art
"I usually pick subjects as social, behavioral, or environmental commentaries. Most of my early work began like a multi-media sculpture, almost like building a miniature movie set. I use props - props can be anything, whatever I find interesting or useful for future pieces. I only use a prop once then it is discarded.
I spend months, even years, photographing EVERYTHING - from someone sitting on a bench to a wrapper on the floor. I consider my photographs also part of my prop collection. My work is a multimedia puzzle; the trick is pasting everything together until it makes sense to tell the story. Then I reconstruct and abstract it."