"Like Buddha beneath the Bodhi-tree, the audience sat in the midst of Chiaromonte's "The Cell", and hopefully came away with knowledge, and with a desire to make a difference instead of a sameness." Marrian McLellan Work, Art Papers
I am grateful to Marcel Duchamp for beginning swimming lessons, for opening my creative vision to a myriad of possibilities with regards to materials and humor. I am also grateful to John Cage for giving me the opportunity to hear the silence between the notes and to Joseph Beuys for his willingness to show us his wounds. These artists were my mentors and provided me a sense for the physical nature or direction of my work and allowed me to blur the boundaries between creator/creation and audience/spectator/participant.
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Since the mid 1990’s my work has dealt with my responsibility as an artist to communicate visually the woundedness of creature and creation. This was addressed through my performance work in the “Enlightenment Cell” series and my painting and sculptures in the “Body Bag” and “Ghost Dance” Series. The current box paintings “Water Feature: What Lies Beneath?” are an extension of the earlier work and draws the viewer to the world below the surface of things. The box paintings are broken down into two sections with the lower pond section giving a sense of quiet contemplation which is juxtaposed with the upper section which exposes the cruelty and atrocities we have visited upon ourselves. The physical nature of the box paintings requires the viewer to come close to the pieces revealing what is hidden below the surface of the pond, moving from the Koi and lilies in the pond to the upheaval and rage of thorns, hinted at body parts, bandages, torn and folded flags, and images of war and its aftermath.
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Whether in the box paintings, sculptures, or the performance/installation pieces all is not lost there is redemption and hope for humankind. For me and hopefully the viewer the work functions as a vehicle of release, exposing one side of the human coin in all its potential for evil while at the same time hinting at the other side of the coin, the goodness of humanity.
"Chiaromonte tenuously weaves between contemporary issues and those which are considered timeless. He doesn’t seem to replace one preoccupation for the other. In a sense his performance seems primarily focused on the act of ceremony and mythmaking. The audience is offered the task of drawing the relevances and transposing the signification of the performance themselves. It is precisely the overlap and the shift of the signifiers he uses that draws my attention." Crosby McCloy, Number Art Journal #5