Andrew Tosiello

Lives and works in Oakland, CA, USA

Artist statement

I began making these paintings to have something to do during my limited time in the studio; when I’m free from my day job. These paintings, then, are an arbitrary solution to a self-imposed crisis, but that’s true of most art, I think. Having decided to make paintings, and having accepted that that was as good a reason as any, I developed a process allowing me as much efficiency in the studio as possible. I cobbled together a computer script which does the following: Make a request, over the internet, to Harvard University Art Museum’s API for the data pertaining to an artwork, selected at random, in its collection. Use the colors listed in the data set to generate an image according to predetermined rules, applied by chance. Save the image with a title made by pulling phrases from texts such as short stories by Borges, the convolutes of the Arcades Project by Benjamin, The Iliad, and poems by Nostradamus, among others. Then, once I have generated a suitable cache of images, I pick one, either by trusting my taste or outsourcing the job to a roll of the dice. I transfer the outline of the image to a canvas and begin: taping off lines, applying vinyl letters as a stencil, mixing colors, and applying paint. When I’m done, I step back and look at the painting: some of them work, some of them don’t.

Artwork