New York: Paul Rusconi at Robilant & Voena

Family Portrait 2019 Nail enamel and spray paint on Plexiglas Triptych: (96 x 144 in.) Courtesy Robilant & Voena, New York, NY

By DAVID JAGER April 11, 2025

In an opening scene in Leonard Cohen’s era defining 60’s novel ‘Beautiful Losers”, the mysterious character F is busy painting his plaster model of the Akropolis with bright red nail polish. It’s an arresting aesthetic decision that is jarring at first. The use of artificial bright red lacquer on a stately classical structure seems jarring. Yet the bold contrast, combined with its slow and meticulous execution, make the exercise weirdly compelling.

Rusconi applies many arrayed dots of nail varnish to large sheets of plexiglass that in turn are placed over pointillist paintings of trees. Echoes of sixties and seventies influences, not just from literature but also early Op Art and Minimalism,  come to the fore in his current show at Robilant & Voena. These modified paintings of trees and flowers, which he calls ‘portraits’  recall the work of Dennis Oppenheim,  or even Joseph Beuys in their environmental and conceptual focus.

Rusconi’s betrays an overriding concern with natural systems, in other words, as well as an abiding fascination with optics and human perception. He also dodges any traditional notions of authorship. One doesn’t get the feeling of a singular personality driving the work, but rather a larger investigation into systems. Rusconi is interested in systems expressed through meticulous and obsessive processes. It is these processes that have coalesced into works of art, almost in a self-generative fashion.

Part of the compelling effect is optical. Rusconi meticulously applies dots of nail polish in different bright shades. Though the effect has often been mistaken as photographic, and Rusconi does use photographs as a reference, every element of each piece is, in fact, made entirely from dots of varnish or spray paint. The dots are placed on sheets of Plexiglas, which overlay his similar pointillist renderings of trees, also entirely made with varnish and spray paint ( incredible as it seems). Each drop of nail varnish is a pointillist accent, applied in a dot matrix pattern echoing the painted image beneath it. In this way Rusconi creates a shimmering visual doppler effect between the two painted layers which is brightened by the bright overlay of saturated color. The effect is extremely precise yet hypnotic, almost hallucinatory, amplified by the nearly wall sized scale of each piece.

In person Rusconi has spoken of his fascination with mycorrhizal networks, or the extensive, symbiotic systems of funghi that coexist with arboreal root systems. These systems allow communication and transfer of nutrients along individual root systems and between trees.  Trees are complex, intertwined, symbiotic organisms, in other words.

This is especially true of ‘Family Portrait’ a portrait of a stand of grouped trees that are entwined above and beneath the soil. Covered with pointillist layers of orange, lilac, and green, the effect is nearly topographical. Rusconi grabs a hold of the eyes ability to discern pattern and color at almost a rudimentary level. He also seems to be interested at the level of legibility where the idea of tree is nascent in the mind, but not necessarily discernible immediately. Once again, he is exploring vision as a systemic phenomenon. He seems to be asking, “what is it about the groupings of shadowy forms, covered with meticulous dots of hallucinatory color, that still manages to read in the mind as a tree, or group of trees?

Looking at these shimmering portraits, one has the sense that he also views the root like dendrites of the human nervous system as a similar system, with which the visual cortex is symbiotically intertwined. Another tree. This notion of parallel systems and  interconnectivity seems to underlie much of the profound logic of this show, in a way that is not merely environmental in intent but ecological in its conception.

Portrait of a Tree in Pinks  2022 Nail enamel and spray paint on Plexiglas (49 1/4 X 36) Courtesy Robilant & Voena

Humans have also built very complex technical systems on this planet, in ways that unwittingly borrow from the charisma and genius of nature. Could Rusconi’s use of nail polish, the most synthetic cooptation of floral color by humans (and purely decorative), be a comment on how deeply we remain in sync with natural strategies, even at our most artificial?

Perhaps. Rusconi’s use of what appears to be dot matrix template in his exhaustive hand painted surfaces suggests a symbiosis of hand and machine, of organic and mechanical systems, given that the dot patterns on both surfaces appear to be computer assisted. Yet another layer of resonance and interconnectivity is suggested, between organic, human and informational systems. Layer upon layer of connectivity is suggested.

 In the meantime, the nearly clinically scientific feel of this work is offset by its sheer prettiness. His ’21 flowers’ , occupying an entire wall of the space, are an exercise in refined design, with each flower represented by a simple line drawing placed on a background of gradient color. The effect is limpid and serene, pleasing in the extreme. One gets the sense once again that authorial intent is not the point here. Rather, nature provides its own pleasing forms and colors that are best uncovered and reiterated rather than replicated.

21 Florals (Expansion portraits) Spray paint and colored pencil on Arches paper Courtesy Robilant & Voena

Living things are the focus of this exhibit. But there are other ambitious notions about the way nature is both organized in its structure and perceived by its human co-pilots. Rusconi is not only interested in the deep structures of living systems, he is also fascinated by the vagaries of perception, and the complex, often hidden ways that the natural world and human perception are intertwined. Luckily for him, and for us, nature is beautiful. WM