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Shane Guffogg, a world renown artist, who was raised in Lindsay and Strathmore, will have his art featured at the historic Scala Contarini del Bovolo in Venice, Italy.

Beginning in April, 2024, Guffogg will present a new series of 21 paintings titled At the Still Point of the Turning World. This unprecedented series of works represents Guffogg's ongoing dialogue with T.S. Eliot, and with the famous poem Four Quartets, which inspired him to create large-scale paintings that explore the intersection of time and space, consciousness and transcendence, with the concept of movement, escape and migration.

The dialogue between the artist's abstract paintings and the poet who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948 tells of the human race and its living in constant movement, tension, in constant passage and breaking of the diaphragm between now and elsewhere.

The exhibition was born from the artist's study and deep immersion in the writings of Eliot. Guffogg connects with the writer's thoughts, which are deeply rooted in ancient Christian ideologies and Eastern Sacred Texts, giving rise to an exhibition that places our transitory nature at the center of its message of humanity throughout history. This transience mutability, as well as the drive and tendency of the single individual to mutate and subvert the "status quo," in search of an "other place," space and solution to the dimension of exteriority and extraneousness not only geographical and geopolitical, but social, temporal and contextual.

The theme of the exhibition also has strong autobiographical roots in the artist's life and family history. Guffogg's father immigrated to the United States in 1957 from northern England, where he had worked as a coal miner since the age of 15. His motivation for the search for an "Elsewhere" was mainly economic, driven by the pursuit of the "American dream," which in England, as in Italy, in Europe and beyond, was the alternative for millions of individuals to social and economic depression post World War II and pre Economic Boom.

Guffogg moved to Los Angeles in the late 1980s from the Central Valley for similar reasons: it's important to underline how, before the contemporary "information age" reached almost every corner of the globe, there was an urgent need to gravitate towards places where innovative ideas were developing and progressive thought was welcomed and art and culture were esteemed rather than ridiculed.

Guffogg's artistic research revolves around the capturing of fleeting moments of thought, presence. Impulses, and movements.

The painted lines that make up the works in the first room of the exhibition symbolize movement influenced by the newfound chaos prevalent in our 24-hour news cycle, he said. Through these nine paintings, my goal is to establish order using color and symmetry that transcends both Eastern and Western thought, addressing the core of our common humanity: the desire to be part of something bigger than ourselves while maintaining our individual identity and purpose.

The paintings in the second room also draw inspiration from T.S. Eliot's four Quartets. In contrast to the ethereal themes of the first room, these twelve paintings explore the physical realm, blending Western painting techniques with Eastern calligraphy.

The nine paintings in the first room are intended for contemplation, bypassing the need for intellectual analysis of how or why they exist. The second room represents the flip side of the same coin, designed to be confrontational and physically engaging.

Guffogg's artistic process is deeply philosophical and views each brushstroke as a thought that evokes sensory memories essential for the creation of a visual language. In this way, his paintings are like words that can be read and interpreted, but also exist in a realm beyond language. By exploring the Eastern and Western ideological influences within Eliot's poem, Guffogg found a rich source of inspiration that allowed him to create a hypnotic rhythm of creation, pulsating between past, present and future.

From the beginning of his career, Guffogg has been influenced by the art and ideologies of ancient cultures and civilizations. Another part is quantum physics, and the vibration of the invisible and intuitive musical score of nature. These paintings absorb his psyche through the physical process of painting.

For the exhibition at the Contarini del Bovolo, Guffogg is inspired by three verses from the first section of Burnt Norton; Reach into the silence, Only Through Time is Time Conquered, and Neither Flesh nor Fleshless. Eliot wrote the first section in 1936 before the Second World War, with a consideration of the element of air, staged in early summer. It begins with Eliot inviting the reader into a rose garden to experience the timeless beauty and essence of all knowledge.

Guffogg's Reach into the Silence will be the first works the public sees when they enter the exhibition. When a guest arrives at Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo, he will enter through a 15th-century staircase 28 meters high. Due to its curvilinear shape the staircase is called bovolo, that's, spiral. This staircase has two sides; Gothic and Renaissance, and is one of the most fascinating elements in the history of Venice architecture.

The exhibition will be divided into two rooms, each characterized by a different passage from Eliot's poetry. The first room features eight paintings titled, Reach into the Silence. These eight paintings measure 6 x 5 feet each (182.8 x 152.4 cm). These works use a neutral palette inspired by the Bovolo building and surrounding area, intertwining Venetian reds, grays, subtle lavender accents, blues, greens and nude tones. The visual effects of countless thin lines, each representing months of the artist's presence as he paints, are condensed into a single moment, a shimmering, unexpressed silence that invites the viewer to contemplate the abstract nature of time and space. At the end of the room there will be a horizontal painting titled, Only Through Time, Time is Conquered, which draws on the colors of the rich history of Venice and the painting by Tintoretto, a sketch for the commission of Paradise at the Doge's Palace, a work that's part of the collection of IPAV and permanently exhibited in the rooms of Palazzo Contarini.

This final painting, measuring 7 x 9 feet (213.6 x 274.3 cm) will also allow viewers to experience the movement of the artist's hand in creating the work. The viewer will have a QR code to scan and then, once pointed at the painting, the AR will be activated showing the inversion of the application of colors and lines, until the painting is in the initial phase, which will then dissolve visually revealing Tintoretto.

The second room will host the series Neither Flesh nor Fleshless, which takes up another passage from Eliot's poetry. This series includes 12 paintings consisting of two paintings measuring 60 x 48 inches (152.4 x 121.9 cm), six paintings 40 x 36 inches (101.6 x 91.4 cm), and four paintings 30 x 24 inches ( 76.2 x 60.9 cm). All the paintings are oil on canvas and the paintings in the second room use chiaroscuro and calligraphic movements to create a bridge between past and present. These works are figurative yet rooted in abstraction, inviting viewers to contemplate the interplay between the physical and the ephemeral.

The titles will be printed as signage on the walls, but the signage will also activate another AR component that will display the title of each painting in Italian and English, in the context of the poem so the viewer can see where the titles were taken from. While these two rooms are not intended to make an overt political statement, they represent a chance for viewers to contemplate their place in the world. In an age of constant information overload, Guffogg believes art has an essential role to play in guiding people towards self-awareness. Using augmented reality, Guffogg is expanding the possibilities of what art can be, inviting viewers to see and think beyond the 24/7 information age.

Ultimately, his vision for this exhibition is one that allows viewers to contemplate what it means to live in the 21st century, acknowledging the past while existing in the present moment.

Guffogg, who also attended Porterville College, earned a bachelor's from the California Institute of the Arts in 1985.

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Strathmore's Guffogg, world renown artist, to be featured in Venice in ... - Porterville Recorder