Anchored by a mural of bright colors on the gallery’s back wall, a natural outlet for Rizzi’s gestural form of expression, the exhibition demonstrates his fluidity of genre. His recent body of work explores painting techniques that he has developed over the past decade, while expanding his ideas into wall hanging cut outs and a large scale arch made of aluminum and acrylic, which allows for his work to interact with light and create an entirely new composition on the floor.
A native of New York City, Rizzi originally began his artistic endeavors at a young age through graffiti and painting on the streets. While he identifies as an abstract painter, he has gained notoriety throughout the street art community with his murals and public commissions throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia.
Inspired by painters from Abstract Expressionism such as Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell and Bradley Walker Tomlin, JM Rizzi also learned from the Automatic painting techniques of French artist André Masson. He most likens his paintings to jazz music, comparing the base color to the consistent walking bass line, with smaller sections acting as saxophone riffs, highlighting their distinct flavors.
In 2017, JM Rizzi recently completed two murals in Rockefeller Center in New York, and a 7,650 square-foot mural in Boras, Sweden.