“This is not a choice. I do this because I have to,” says artist Joseph Zito, undertaking a marble sculpture that will take two years to finish. For more information visit josephzito.com or email josephzito57@gmail.com.
“First I had to build the gantry with chain hoists just to get it in the studio and move it around,” says Joseph Zito of the 2,500 pound marble block he will transform into a feminine sculpture, continuing to forge his legacy.
An abstract/conceptual of the artist’s weight in aluminum (above) and copper (below), inside his former loft studio in Brooklyn.
By Michael Ryan
IN THE MOUNTAINS - There is an art studio in the mountains between the towns of Durham and Windham where wind-swooshed pine trees and wisening oaks cloister the timeless, inner fulfillment of Joseph Zito.
“This isn’t a choice. I do this because I have to. If I didn’t, I would die,” says Zito of his sculpting, such as the feminine form he has undertaken that will easily occupy the next two years of his existence.
Pinpointing precisely when this latest project began requires a grasping of eternity, a seeming impossibility in mere words and thought.
The work itself is the answer, but not the master carpentry jobs Zito does to pay the bills in the outer world which he says is real and, then again, not.
His greater task is letting the solitude of his remote studio passionately and patiently guide his hands in the finding and experiencing of the sculpture, himself and the unknowable - or is it?
In everyday terms, Zito’s artistic journey started in childhood in Brooklyn. “Michelangelo was my hero from when I was five years old,” he says, initially delving into painting.
He studied at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan and in Paris before coming to a realization in the mid-1980’s.
“I had been painting on wood structures and I asked myself, ‘why do I paint on them when I can make them?’” Zito said in a recent studio interview.
A fresh means of expression burgeoned, described in a review of his work, titled Tempus Fugit (Time Flies), exhibited at Lennon Weinberg Gallery in 2013, one of multiple international shows in his lifetime, thus far.
“This is the fourth in a series of thematic exhibitions in which Zito further examines the confoundhuman condition of what it means to live, to love, and to lose,” the review states.
“The works…function as testaments of both acknowledgement and defiance that time cannot be stopped, the past cannot be retrieved, and what has been lost cannot be gained back.
“To be both living and dying simultaneously is a conundrum that cannot be blindly accepted and explained away,” the review states.
“Zito confronts and grapples with this paradox by creating mechanized sculptures such as Inversion, 2012, and Untitled (Clock), 2012 which operate backwards and counter-clockwise, respectively.”
The pieces “seek to turn back time, to travel in reverse, to head towards the beginning instead of the end,” such as a series of hourglass sculptures “that have been rendered inert; not even one grain of sand is permitted to pass and mark a second gone by,” the review states.
Zito, born in 1957, is anything but motionless. A book has been written about him. His artistry is included in many museums and private collections. His latest sculpture harkens both to and fro.
He has imported a ton-and-a-quarter block of Carrara marble requiring a special gantry, he built, simply to get it in the studio, which he also built.
The stone arrived in the mountains from the legendary quarries of Italy, “the same place Michelangelo got his marble,” Zito says.
“I am 69 years old. I don’t even know if I can accomplish what I must but I will just keep pushing. You are either an artist or not. You can’t choose to be one,” he says.
“I need to do a few more great pieces for my legacy. It is about ego, I understand, but that’s what we do. We want to be part of history.
”I work seven days a week,” Zito says. “When I am sculpting, I need my Baroque classical music and nothing else. I’m never in such peace as when I am in my studio, sculpting. I lose sense of time.”
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