BIRTHPLACE:   Oceanside, NY BIRTH YEAR:   1979 LIVES IN:   New York, NY

WORKS IN:   New York, NY WEBSITE:   http://www.justinfrancavilla.com SCHOOLS:   The Cooper Union School of Art, 2001, BFA (Painting, Drawing, Printmaking, Photography)

I SAID YOU FCKN DIE! is comprised primarily of large scale ink drawings that depict human conflict and struggles for power and survival.

These drawings are largely derived from sports photographs which serve as sketches.  By extracting these figures from their playing fields we can observe the physical aggression inherent in competition.  These nameless figures, stripped of their usual uniforms, leave only their physicality and emotionality behind.

I have had an obsession with war photography and explosive images of violence since I was eleven years old and our country entered the first Gulf War.  The fact that we were going to war was incomprehensible and anachronistic to me.  I thought wars were a thing of history.  The idea of actually killing people was unfathomable to me and I still find it profoundly hard to grasp.  These drawings evolved out of that disillusionment.  They are expressions of my anger that we humans have so much trouble living together.  As a pacifist and a humanist I find it extremely frustrating and disheartening that the world is filled with such perpetual religious, economical and political unrest.  Often I am asked who the people in my drawings are.  In a sense they are all me, screaming on paper in political and peaceful protest against the world's injustices.

I SAID YOU FCKN DIE! also encapsulates the mentality of those that are only out for their own benefit.  Capitalist society has concentrated wealth and power in the hands of so few, consequently condemning the rest to a lesser life or one stricken with poverty. These drawings partially represent the oppression of the underclass struggling to move upward, the fight of the middle class moving sideways and those at the top trying to hold on.

I work with ink on paper because it requires me to be decisive and move swiftly.  Paper is fragile but, if taken care of, will last for hundreds of years.  Paper is representative of us, simultaneously strong and resilient yet also extremely delicate and perishable.  Both must be cared for.  Ink represents a sense of permanence that erasable graphite does not.  Ink also has an inherently indelible power; nothing can be undone.  The evolution of the drawing is transparent and knowable.  Any lies I tell are left on the page.  The beauty and the power of ink drawings reside in their ability to only tell the truth however riddled with mistakes.  There is nowhere to hide.

BIOGRAPHY:

EXHIBITIONS       

Daniel Cooney Fine Arts, Solo Show:    Spring 2008

The Cooper Union, End of the Year Show    1998, 1999, 2000, 2001

The Cooper Union, Houghton Gallery, Two-person Show    2001

AWARDS              

Four Year Full Tuition Scholarship to Cooper Union   1997-2001 

Recipient of the 1999-2000 Benjamin Menschel Fellowhship

PUBLICATIONS  

Harper's Magazine   November 2007