Serena Bocchino is an artist who began exhibiting her work in 1986 in the East Village, when she was chosen by Susan Rothenberg for an Artist Chose Artists Exhibition at the Jus de Pomme Gallery in New York City. The success of that exhibition lead to many other exhibitions across the country.
Bocchino was awarded a studio residency at PS1 (now PS1 MOMA) in 1987. During that international studio program, The Vice Prime Minister of Italy invited Bocchino to have her first international exhibition in Rome, Italy. The catalogue was written by international art writer and critic Laura Cherubini and Manuela Gandini. During the next few years, Bocchino was awarded a Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant, An artists Space Award, the Basil Alkazzi Award and Art Matters award. Subsequent exhibitions in New York were well received with reviews in the New York Times, Village Voice and The New Yorker Magazine. From 1988-2009 Five films have been created about Bocchino and her painting process and have been aired on PBS and at the Museum of Modern Art as well as on TIMES SQUARE FILM FESTIVAL, SPONSORED by CBS Open Air Shorts on CBS Spectacular in New York City and the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Paintings and Drawing by Serena Bocchino explore Composition and Color. Each painting incorporates drawing into the painting using a unique and strategic use of Line that generates an ethereal space that directs the eye in and out of each composition. She has been called a colorist for her unique palette and fine use of tonal values and investigation of hue. Each canvas is an investigation of Chromatic Space. Over the past 25 years, Bocchino explores color and composition in two ways; utilizing a reduced color schema or a heavily modulated one. It is the highly sophisticated range of movement with spatial areas of color and lyrical mark making that captivates the viewer.
Bocchino studied with the famous colorist, Voy Fangor. The figurative artists John Kacere, Adele Weber and Robert Kaupelis of New York University were influential as mentors. She received her Masters Degree from New York University and studied abroad at Wroxton College in Oxfordshire England where she had a special concentration in British Architecture, the pre-Raphealites and John Singer Sargent’s work.
The New Jersey state Council on the Arts has awarded Serena Bocchino in both Painting and Drawing. Her work is in the collections of the Trenton State Museum, the Smithsonian Institute, The St. Louis Art Museum, The Springfield Museum of Art, The Zimmerli Art Museum, The Montclair Art Museum, the Jersey City Museum, the Art in Embassies Program in Washington D.C, as well as many corporate collections, such as McKinsey & Co., KPG Peat Marwick, IBJ Schroder Bank, Duff & Phelps. Her paintings are also represented in many other Private and Public Collections.
The first monograph entitled Serena Bocchino the Artist, with over 140 full color illustrations was edited by Lily Zhang with an introduction by Kathleen Goncharov and written by Lisa A. Banner and Jonathan Goodman was released in 2015. Signed copies of this book will be available at the opening and throughout the run of the exhibition – June 30, 2017.ArtHaus is located in SOMA at 411 Brannan Street, San Francisco. Gallery hours are: Tuesday-Friday, 11-6, and Saturday, Noon-5. (415) 977-0223 www.arthaus-sf.com