Anthony Iacono works primarily in collage from cut-out sections of painted papers. This process produces an unusual crispness made from the cut rather than the painted boundary between objects and bodies. The collages are easily mistranslated, first appearing as digital images or flat airbrush paintings, while in person they are flooded with paint and texture.

When we can see their faces, Iacono’s figures engage in the business of everyday life — talking on a phone, applying makeup, or posing for an unseen viewer. Influenced by the aesthetics of film posters and voeyuristic erotic thrillers from the 1980’s, the seemingly mundane scenarios Iacono creates are offset by the suggestive, darkly saturated color palette. Posed and composed with great care, Iacono’s pristinely gradated world is wrought with coded language and suspense; it seems that in an instant, the scene could turn in any direction. Out of this coiled energy of anticipation, the mostly anonymous subjects of his world leap into action. As if tasked to create new erotic games with what is laying around the house, the figures in Iacono’s collages pervert objects at hand for uncertain, but certainly titillating, ends. In slapstick acts simultaneously sexual and comedic, his figures topple and reconstruct the arena of intimacy. The luminous, nearly glowing bodies are playfully degraded, teased, and undressed, or perhaps play in acts of self-gratification. The residue of public life lingers in the air, as a highly polished black leather shoe glints and gleams through eroticized exchanges of power. We escape into the pages of glossy magazines, with lacquered nails and lips seducing us in advertisements. Although these visuals are common in Iacono’s work, his puzzling narratives and curvy boys with a certain “bounce to their step” are unlikely anything we’d see in Vogue or on the cover of a Duran Duran record.

— Michael Royce