Ron Diorio: Hometown, 2008

4 September - 31 October 2008

Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art is pleased to announce their second exhibition of work by New York photographer Ron Diorio. The show, titled Hometown, will begin 4 September with an opening reception for the artist and will remain on view until 31 October. 

Hometown groups nineteen photographs evoking the artist’s native New York City. Through the juxtaposition of intimate scenes hung alongside cityscape views, Diorio builds on his previous exhibition with Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art (titled Around Here). Edward Hopper’s paintings are often cited as an influence and inspiration for Diorio’s photography, and the pieces in Hometown continue the artist’s exploration of themes and aesthetics that make the comparison with the painter apt. The exhibition emphasizes urban landscapes where figures remain disconnected and somber. Moreover, people often appear in hunched positions, signaling the intensity of living in the city. While his photographs are often melancholic, and even sometimes quietly foreboding, Diorio’s  redactive technique allows figure and color to bleed. This gentle abstraction gives the work’s formal qualities a serene and tranquil impression, and ultimately places his imagery somewhere between memory and reality. 

In the age of digital manipulation Diorio’s artistry resists the literalness of photography and embraces an imaginative vision. His work reflects the technological progression of photography, while undermining some of its fundamental suppositions. He writes, “It is not the decisive moment frozen. It is a more measured purposeful encounter -- the creation of the physical object. This is what I consider to be the ‘art.’ The screen image or the photographic print is the object, the document of my process where the image becomes an image of itself. An event takes place but the viewer doesn't experience that. They experience the idea of that.” 

This exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue, and a limited edition, hardbound publication incorporating Anytown, Around Here, and Hometown, and featuring a tipped-in print will also coincide with the show. 

Diorio's photographs have been exhibited most recently in London, and his work has been included in shows at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Massachusetts and the Center for Photography at Woodstock in New York.