"Dario Andrea"

Dario Andrea's paintings fall into two categories: portraits and collages of portraits. Andrea, who includes in his work not only contemporary people, but also people from the renaissance, depicts the universality of human emotion despite cultural and temporal differences. In dealing with subjects from the renaissance, Andrea adds a touch of surreality: a megaphone protrudes out of an ear, the words "I am" are written on a man's ruff in red. Though human emotion has changed little, the artistic expression of emotion has. The solitude of a person in a portrait might be taken for granted because of the solitude's inevitability in portraits. This solitude is an important element in Andrea's work, though so obvious that it might be overlooked. His collages of portraits, where the people depicted are completely ignorant of each other's existence though occupying the same canvass, address and solve this issue. Self absorption, it seems, is more destructive to connection than time or culture.

-Eugene Hwang