Simo Neri

simoneri's picture
Neighborhood: Mission
Group Affiliation: 1890 Bryant Street Studios
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Serial Photographer
Sequential photography allows me to work on a large scale and to combine painterly elements with a sculptural format. The compositions become interactive, rhythmic, and meditative, providing a glimpse of the infinite within the physical world. Observe the writing of water on sand, the pattern of bark on a tree, a building’s glass façade, the shimmer of cloth, the veins in a leaf. Experience a different perception of time, not presented in a seamless flow, but as time broken down into moments, captured one after the other.

Art in Public Spaces
I am interested in developing works of art for public spaces, on a scale that interacts convincingly with public architecture, and which will be enjoyed by a large and diverse public. In my work I like to transgress predictable perceptions of space and time: to widen horizons by installing indoor skies and vertical walls of grass, to have people walk through curtains of fire or car parts. By making work that can be touched and sometimes actually walked through, I challenge the conventional notion of art as something to be kept separate from the body. I think of my work as serious, certainly, but at the same time as both playful and poetic.

Wearable Art
“One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.” Oscar Wilde
Printing my work directly onto fabric offers great creative possibilities. For the last twelve years I have been experimenting with printing on a number of different fabrics to create wearable objects, using designs derived from my original compositions. Though I continue to experiment, my favorite product to date is the silk scarf: a wrap-around composition printed directly on silk. The inks penetrate this highly resistant, easily washable silk permanently, making the scarf durable in time.